The best female sculptors you've never heard of
As we wait with baited breath for Rachel Whiteread's upcoming retrospective at Tate Britain, we round up five of the best female sculptors you've never heard of, but ultimately definitely should have
Long committed to documenting the political turmoil and violence of her home country of Colombia, Salcedo’s sculptures gives form and expression to human suffering. Inspired by pain, trauma, and loss, she creates a space for individual and collective mourning.
Her work is imbued with her personal history – over the years many members of her family have disappeared – and explores the unwavering emptiness the death of a loved one can leave. Salcedo's artistic process is raw.
It often involves interviewing victims of violence. She combines run-of-the mill materials, like furniture and clothing, in unusual ways, to evoke feelings of horror and despair. Her sculptures make big statements –so much so, in fact, that in 2007, the artist shattered the earth in her piece Shibboleth, exhibited in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern.
