1550 Chairs Stacked Between Buildings

“1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings” is an installation by Doris Salcedo at Istanbul Biennial. In 2002, Salcedo placed 280 chairs at the Palace of Justice in Bogotá "to pay homage to those killed here in a failed guerrilla coup seventeen years earlier." In 2003, she filled the Istanbul Biennial space between two buildings with 1,550 chairs "evoking the masses of faceless migrants who underpin our globalised economy."

Salcedo's work provokes many questions after a first look, but she does provide answers to the mystery. The approach she takes to portraying these messages are unique and bold although she is using everyday objects like chairs.

Photograph by Muammer Yanmaz
via [Jay Mug, Tate]