Doris Salcedo: Palimpsest

The artist, born in Bogotá in 1958, with her objects, sculptures and large site-specific interventions Salcedo addresses the ever-repeating cycle of violence, outrage, remembrance and forgetting. “Palimpsest” is dedicated to the refugees and migrants who over the past twenty years have died attempting dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean or the Atlantic in search of a better life in Europe.

The title of the exhibition project derives from the ancient Greek word “palimpsest”, which refers to manuscript pages that were reused several times over the course of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The traces of the original sentences remained partly visible under the new script, which made the transmission of the old texts possible in the first place. Doris Salcedo’s “Palimpsest” is a walk-through installation of sand-coloured, porous floor slabs.