Fragmentos: Anti-Monuments, Memory & Justice | Doris Salcedo | MArch Design Practice Studio Sessions

Why It Matters

Fragments demonstrates how art can convert instruments of violence into participatory memorials, reshaping public memory and informing more just, climate‑aware design practices worldwide.

Key Takeaways

• Fragments uses melted guerrilla weapons to create a counter‑monument.
• Survivors of sexual violence physically reshaped guns into memorial floor.
• The work rejects triumphalist narratives, emphasizing absence and collective trauma.
• RCA's design practice links material archaeology with justice and climate concerns.
• Annual rotating artworks keep the memorial space alive and dialogic.

Summary

The Royal College of Art hosted Colombian artist Doris Salcedo to discuss her 2018 work Fragments, a counter‑monument born from the 2016 peace accord that required the surrender of 13,000 guerrilla firearms. Salcedo transformed 37 tons of decommissioned weapons into a floor that serves as a public site of memory, inviting victims and the broader community to confront Colombia’s fifty‑year civil war. Key insights include the radical decision to melt down the guns rather than erect a triumphalist structure, and the active participation of twenty women survivors of sexual violence who hammered the metal, symbolically reversing the power of the weapons. Salcedo frames the piece as a fragmented, incomplete history, rejecting a single authoritative narrative and foregrounding the scale of displacement, disappearances, murders and gender‑based atrocities. Salcedo’s own words underscore the intent: “There is nothing to celebrate in war.” The project also incorporates contributions from other artists—Michael Armitage, Tanya Gandani, Batrice Gonzalez—creating a polyphonic, ever‑changing memorial. The involvement of victims transforms testimonial injustice into lived testimony, allowing them to narrate their trauma through material practice. The implications extend beyond Colombian memory politics. By coupling material archaeology with feminist and climate‑justice lenses, the work challenges conventional monumentality and offers a participatory model for designers, architects and policymakers seeking just, inclusive ways to reckon with collective trauma and to envision sustainable, equitable futures.

Original Description

What does it mean to build a monument out of the weapons of war — and then refuse to call it a monument?

In this Studio Session from the Royal College of Art's MArch Design Practice programme, world-renowned Colombian artist Doris Salcedo discusses her landmark work Fragmentos — a counter-monument in Bogotá made from weapons surrendered by FARC combatants, hammered into floor plates by women survivors of sexual violence.

Salcedo's practice sits at the intersection of material archaeology, collective memory, and political witness. From Shibboleth at Tate Modern to Sumando Ausencias in the Plaza Bolivar, her work transforms everyday objects into bearers of historical trauma — making state violence and disappearance materially, undeniably visible.

In this conversation — hosted by Dr Helena Rivera — Salcedo explores:

• How Fragmentos redefines authorship, memory, and justice

• The ethics of working with trauma without reproducing spectacle

• What 'just transition' looks like when materials carry the weight of violence

• How collective making can become a form of political pedagogy

About MArch Design Practice at the RCA

The MArch Design Practice programme at the Royal College of Art is for practitioners rethinking the direction of their work. We take the climate crisis as our central concern — looking beneath visible failures at the structural conditions shaped by coloniality, racial capitalism, and the assumptions built into design systems. This session connects to our Material Processes and Just Transition units.

Part of the Studio Sessions series — bringing leading international voices in art, design, and architecture into conversation with RCA students:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk-Jp7vRQvwP2Qxyb4c17dwwS2jmK3wuD&si=cCoPt0YbMxx8lueu

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