Medellin, Colombia: Reinhabiting Memory

Abstract

The project La Piel del Memoria/The Skin of Memory brought together the public-art vision of the artist Suzanne Lacy and the research and community work of the anthropologist Pilar Riaño-Alcalá. It responded to local needs and situations influenced by specific global forces, using art, ritual, and commemoration. The project took place in 1998–99 in the Colombian city of Medellín, in a barrio called Antioquia, a neighborhood with a distinct history marked by exclusion, social tensions, and multiple forms of drug-related, territorial, political, and everyday violence. Lacy and Riaño worked in collaboration with local youth, women, and community leaders, with five local nongovernmental and governmental organizations, and with a multidisciplinary team of historians, social workers, educators, artists, and architects. The following text intersperses a description of the project with excerpts from an ongoing conversation between Lacy and Riaño.