‘Displacement allows us to see the other side of the coin… It is obviously a position that generates tension and conflict, but I believe that from the position of displacement art derives its most powerful expression.’ — Doris Salcedo.
Tracing the political, personal, and poetic meanings of the term displacement, Dr Catherine Gander, an expert in documentary aesthetics and artistic forms of resistance, explores how, in Doris Salcedo’s artworks, the traumas of displacement take physical form. This lecture and response widens the discussion to include other artists and poets whose work also engages with documentary practices to (re)present ongoing traumatic histories. It considers how, by confronting the corporeal conditions of dislocation, erasure, and precarity, art can refigure displacement as a position of political and cultural resistance.
Presented in the context of the exhibition, Doris Salcedo, Acts of Mourning, showing until 21 July 2019, in the main galleries.
Further information available on the IMMA website