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Untitled

Artist/Maker (Colombian, b. 1958)
Date1989–93
MediumShirts, gesso, and steel rebars
DimensionsOverall: 66 3/4 × 10 1/8 × 15 1/8 in. (169.5 × 25.7 × 38.4 cm)
Base: 3 1/2 × 21 × 26 7/8 in. (8.9 × 53.3 × 68.3 cm)
Credit LineGift of Cristina Delgado (OC 1980) and Stephen F. Olsen (OC 1979)
Object number2002.21.1
Status
Not on view
Copyright More Information
Comprising a stack of plastered white shirts speared by three black metal rebars, this work was created in response to the 1988 mass murder of male workers at a banana plantation in Colombia. Similar to the white work shirts the plantation workers would have worn, the garments stand in for the murdered men. The piercing of the shirts with rebars symbolizes the violence of their deaths.

Originally shown in 1989 at the Galería Garcés Velásquez, the AMAM work was installed alongside several other stacks of plastered shirts of various heights, as well as metal bed frames wrapped in animal skins, lying on the floor or leaning up against the wall. The bed frames recall how the plantation workers were dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their families. One of Salcedo’s first projects to incorporate clothing, this installation marked a turning point in her body of work as she increasingly began to use clothing as her primary material.
Provenance(Alexander and Bonin Gallery, New York); purchased by Cristina Delgado and Stephen F. Olsen, Brooklyn, NY; by gift 2002 to Allen memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OHExhibition History
From Modernism to the Contemporary, 1958-1999
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 21, 2003 - September 9, 2003 )
Making the Body in Contemporary Sculpture
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 10, 2004 - February 7, 2005 )
New Frontiers: American Art Since 1945
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (August 29, 2006 - December 23, 2006 )
Latin American and Latino Art at the Allen
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (September 2, 2014 - June 28, 2015 )
Body Proxy: Clothing in Contemporary Art
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (September 1, 2015 - December 13, 2015 )
Bakunin's Barricade: Ahmet Öğüt
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 16, 2022 - December 23, 2022 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary
This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator. Noticed a mistake? Have some extra information about this object? Please contact us.