I have chosen to respond on an online article relating to Doris Salcedo where I will discuss ethics and censorship to do with the artist. My reason to choose the subject of art is because it is a type of citizen journalism.
Artists may explore different aspects of society through commenting on social issues, gender based problems, racism, inequalities between social classes, and critiques on the consumer society. Art can be the most powerful form of activism because it lasts long after the protestors and keeps us thinking about the issue in subtle ways. Artists express their social and political views to help reform society, they serve humanity best when they focus on a truthful expression of the world.
Doris Salcedo has an intense concern with human anguish and has an emotional and political strategy. She was born in Colombia where the Government is corrupt and has a background of both systematic and random acts of violence and terror occur everyday. Salcedo believes that “the major possibilities of art are not in showing the spectacle of violence but instead hiding it…it is the latency of violence that interests me.” Her work is to be looked at universally identifying human rights and the aftermath of problems associated with the “disappearances” of young women. All her work is based on real happenings from a private experience she had shared with the public to express her grief. Salcedo creates sculptures that evoke the human toll of the ongoing drug and civil wars in her country.