Doris Salcedo's Empty Rooms

During the exhibition's inauguration, the artsy wait in line to visit empty rooms.

The floor is the work of art.
Appreciate it!

When I visited Doris Salcedo's memorial to victims of Colombia's conflict, I walked eagerly onto the property on Carrera 5 a block south of the Casa de Nariño. Salcedo created her tribute to the victims, particularly women who suffered sexual violence, out of tons of weapons the FARC guerrillas turned over as part of their peace agreement with the government, and which were melted down into brute metal.

For the memorial site, organizers found a centuries-old house whose adobe walls and columns have
slowly crumbled away in the rain and wind. Interestingly, they preserved the ancient house's remains, which itself seems like a haunting reflection on Colombia's long tragedy.

Melting down FARC weapons.

I walked into the building's hall, which led to what seemed to be an exhibition room. But the room was completely empty, except for a few other visitors standing around chatting. Confused, I headed up to the second floor, only to find that except for some first aid supplies, this room was empty too.

Feeling cheated - even tho entrance is free - I asked other visitors why Salcedo's promised artwork memorializing the victims was not to be found. They looked down: "The artwork is the floor," one told me.

In fact, Salcedo had used the tons of metal from the melted guns and other weapons to make the exhibition hall's floor. Her idea was to create a 'counter-monument,' an exhibition guide told me. A 'counter-monument' does not project the sorts of preconceptions which a regular monument would, she explained.

That's all well and good. And it's also true that making the weapons into a floor carries symbolisms -

The old building's eroding adobe
makes an interesting backdrop.

the emptiness of the rooms could represent the losses from violence; with each step in the exhibition, we're trampling on those weapons. Even the old adobe building's decaying state might symbolize the peace agreement's only partial success. Etc.

But I suspect that an unsophisticated peasant from Santander, El Chocó or Putumayo whose relatives had been tortured, disappeared and driven from their homes by armed groups, and who herself had been violated, might not appreciate these lofty, abstract artistic sentiments. She'd look for a concrete representation of Colombia's tragedy.

Colombia, it seems to me, needs something like Washington D.C.'s low, haunting, Vietnam Memorial, or Berlin's headstones commemorating the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

But maybe not yet. After all, Colombia's conflict is still unresolved. A substantial proportion of the FARC's fighters refused to demobilize and are considered 'dissidents.' And the ELN and myriad narco-gangs and other groups remain out there causing havoc and violence.

Colombia's violence, sadly, is far from over.

The FARC's weapons and the United States:

Notably, some of the FARC's newest and most potent weapons had been purchased in the United States - the same nation which has spent billions of dollars trying to defeat Colombia's leftist insurgencies. Similar to Colombia's illegal drug industry, which the U.S. both combats and finances, the U.S. is on both sides of the guerrillas weapons-wise: it pays the Colombian government to battle the guerrillas, while supplying those same guerrillas with weapons to fight the government and terrorize civilians.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Women's Works at the Street Lynx Gallery

Gallery owner Lorenzo Masnah shows prints to a group of Irish tourists. 

Hurry down to La Candelaria's Lynx Art Gallery, on Calle 18 just above Carrera 6 (diagonal to the Freemasons' Temple) to see their exhibition of works by women artists.

The exhibition continues until Sept. 29, when they'll hold a closing ceremony from 6 to 9 p.m. attended by the artists. Admission is free.

Calle 18 No. 4-94, La Candelaria.
Tel: 313-242-0070
@street_lynx_bta

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Cemetery's Art of Discord

The empty mausoleums along 26th Street, with their stencils commemorating the conflict's victims.

Does anybody notice? Drivers pass the
mausoleums decorated by Gonzalez.

You've probably noticed them while traveling east along Calle 26 past the Central Cemetery: the mausoleums decorated with stenciled images of men carrying stretchers and corpses representing victims of Colombia's violence.

The thousands of images are the work of artists Beatriz Gonzalez and a partner and provide a

haunting reminder of Colombia's violence, in particular the victims of the 1948 Bogotazo riots...for those who notice them. My impression is that few do, (despite enforced viewing from Calle 26's chronic traffic jams), and even fewer pay attention.

Gonzalez is now fighting to preserve the artwork in the face of city plans to create a park in the old block of the Central Cemetery.

The stencils of the discord.

Historical memory is important. But so is greeen space, particularly in a poor neighborhood with little of it. A football pitch, a skateboard park and a basketball court would give the youths of the troubled Santa Fe neighborhood behind the cemetery an alternative to drugs and gangs. Some young rappers from Santa Fe whom I knew used to tell me almost routinely about their friends getting stabbed and even murdered. I understand that today one of those same rappers is dead and another is an addict.

And, if the city does the sensible thing by using part of the land for recreation while preserving one of the mausoleums, with explanatory information, lots more people would see the memorial and we might have fewer murders to lament.

The situation strikes me as absurd. But not nearly as absurd as the land across the street and the other a few blocks west by the Jaime Garzon mural, which could be nice public parks if the city did not fence them off with barbed wire. Go figger.

Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Young Botero in the National Museum

A South Sea paradise.

Go see the exhibition of Fernando Botero's early works on now at the Museo Nacional and you'll come away with a surprise: Many of the figures aren't fat. In this early period, from 1948 to '63, he made still lifes, portraits, even abstract works, few of them are fat.

How did Botero get into the fat thing? Perhaps the secret is here somewhere.

Botero at work on a big baby.

Reminds me of New Deal labor art.

Guess this one is fat.

 By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

El Prado Museum on Plaza Bolívar

Until Sept. 19th Madrid´s famed El Prado Museum is displaying life-size reproductions of some of its most famous works on Plaza Bolivar. After that, they'll be in Parque de la 93 and then in Parque El Tunal. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What to do With Narco Art?

Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt at work.
(Photo: Colartes)

During his long life, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, one of his era's most accomplished Colombian sculptors, created works for airports, plazas and museums, commemorating themes of religion, liberty and human rights across Colombia and Mexico,where he lived for 25 years.

But Arenas, who lived from 1919 to 1995, also made one sculpture paying tribute to one of the worst people Colombia has produced: narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar. Now, Colombia may have to decide what to about an artwork which represents the intersection of wealth, crime, art and even sexuality.

The sculpture, called La Familia hangs on a wall of Escobar's El Monaco apartment building in Medellin. It isn't one of the artist's most distinguished works: It portrays sexualized figures standing one atop another, the woman a stereotypicaly voluptuous narcotrafficker's fantasy.

Medellin now plans to demolish the Monaco building in an
effort to change its narco-city image. That's a questionable policy in an era when historical memory is gaining importance. After all, the narcos' extravagant lifestyle demonstrates what happens when a sought-after commodity is prohibited: It makes vicious criminals rich.

La Familia, on a wall of the
El Monaco building in Medellin.

Many narcos, altho not known for their appreciation of fine culture, did collect expensive artworks to show off and to launder their millions. After their deaths or arrests, the art was generally seized and auctioned off by authorities as the ill-gotten gains of criminal enterprise. (However, Pablo Escobar's brother Roberto did recently - and incomprehensibly - win a lawsuit against the government for the value of art and other valuables confiscated from his apartment after the Medellin cartel's collapse in the early 1990s.) Those objects have reentered the world's art market carrying little taint from dirty money.

But what about art created as a tribute to a vicious criminal?

There's no word about why Arenas created the work for Escobar. Did he fear him? Did he admire the man's criminal accomplishments, or his pretentions of nationalist politics? Or did Betancourt just need the money?

According to news reports, Arenas' sculpture may go to Medellin's 'Museo de la Memoria,' which is to commemorate the victims of Medellin's violence. But that hardly seems like an appropriate abode for an eroticized tribute to a mass murderer.

Prometheuus Unchained, in the Casa del Museo de Antioquia.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Makeover for Rita

Cyclists observe Rita in the Parque Nacional.

The long-suffering Rita's
graffitied torso.

Rita, 5:30 p.m., the sculpture by Enrique Grau on Carrera Septina in Bogotá's Parque Nacional has become something of an unlikely urban landmark. Standing at the entrance to one of the city's most popular parks, right beside its largest Catholic university, Rita is a prostitute.

Installed in the park in 2002, over the years, Rita has suffered for reasons more related to her location than her profession. Offering large iron plates on one of the city's primary thoroughfares, this Rita tempts not sexually frustrated males, but passersby in search of self expression, often without the redeeming qualities of artistic ability. Poor Rita has become defaced by graffiti and tagging. Soon, Bogotá plans to clean and renovate Rita.

Besides urban neglect and adolescent misbehavior, Rita's condition could also

A poster on a wall in the Santa Fe neighborhood's
red light district says 'Rejection.'

be interpreted as a representation of abuse against women, always a timely issue in Bogotá. And news of her repairs comes at a time when policies about sex work, which is legal in designated 'tolerance zones,' are once again under discussion in the wake of the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old girl taken from an informal day care center located in Bogotá's Santa Fe tolerance zone.

Whether she is honoring prostitution or warning against it, Rita's renovation won't come cheap: 27 million pesos, or about US $1,000 dollars, according to El Tiempo.

Still, it might be worthwhile, if not for the fact that Rita will get graffitied again soon after.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours