Embodied Memory, Spaces of Action

Abstract

The increasing visibility of victim organizations and social leaders in Colombia allows micro-narratives of the long and complex conflict to challenge official records. Most of the suffering has been experienced by women, making them not only repositories of pain, grief, and suffering, but at the same time “memory entrepreneurs” (Jelin 2003). For the past several decades, Gloria Luz Gómez Cortés has led women collectives in search of their forced disappeared loved ones; visual artist Doris Salcedo has worked on a committed aesthetic of grief. Both of these activists have shone a light upon victims of the Colombian conflict. They have been collaborating on producing embodied objects and archives, relics, portraits, counter-monuments, and evento/actions, re-signifying spaces to preserve the sacredness of life under the worst conditions of violence.