ABSTRACT
This conversation between Colombian artist Erika Diettes and sociologist Vikki Bell gives insight into Diettes’ working practices with a focus on how her current project ‘Oratorio de los Desaparecidos’ (Oratory for the Disappeared) extends her oeuvre. While this work remains, as with many of her earlier projects, routed in care for survivors and relatives of the victims of the complex and on-going armed conflict in Colombia, it includes new aspects, not least that it is a site-specific installation. The conversation sees the artist consider how the Oratorio might respond to the complex process of grieving for a disappeared relative, raising questions of how desire, longing and memory can be represented and supported through artistic practice.
