Doris Salcedo in "Compassion" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

Assistant Carlos Andres Granada: This is one of the sites of the furniture pieces that we’re building. It has to look antique. It has to look original. It starts with Doris making drawings. Once we have the furniture pieces, I get to build models in the computer. We simulate every single aspect of this furniture business.

So after that, they create the plans, and I come down here and talk a little with Ramon, explain him angles and everything. And then we start by making the metal structure. Assistant Ramón Villamarin: I feel like I’m kind of the engineer for Doris. I help her solving some specific problems. I’m not an engineer, but somehow,

I have a foot in each technical and creative things, so I can deal with both things. It was– always my task mainly was how to join those pieces. It’s very difficult things to do. Doris always tries to make something kind of impossible. Assistant Joaquin Sanabria: Carlos does the modeling and worked with Doris in that stage.

With Ramón, eventually, they have to link themselves together. So virtuality to reality. The piece works really from the inside to the outside. It’s all given so that the surface of the piece is structurally accurate in every single millimeter. So beginning from the inside, we have a metal structure that’s very rigid so that it could hold in every way.

You don't see it. You’ll never see it. Finally, this structure would hold the concrete in place so that it doesn't stick out. It doesn't crack, it stays stable when it's being cast. The surface has to prevail above everything else, but, of course, the poetic meaning is the– which is in the surface, it’s totally poetic.