© Erika Diettes / Courtesy Charles Guice Contemporary

For more than two years, contemporary artist Erika Diettes traveled throughout the conflict-torn regions of Colombia collecting the stories, objects and clothing owned by some of the more than 30,000 victims of that country’s armed conflicts. She then photographed the objects in water, representing one of the ways in which people are forcibly disappeared—by disposing of their bodies in the Río Magdalena, Colombia’s principal river. The images are printed life-size on glass five feet in height for the exhibition. And a set of smaller maquettes, typically hung in installation at eye level, serve as reliquaries for the families so often deprived of place or body to mourn.

Represented by Charles Guice Contemporary, Diettes’ artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Americas, and is included in numerous public and private collections. In 2010, she was named as one of Colombia’s leading thinkers by Semana Magazine. A recent exhibition of Río abajo in Medellín was featured on the front page of El Colombiano, Colombia’s second largest newspaper. Diettes latest body of work, Sudarios, opens May 17 at the Museo Iglesia de Santa Clara in Bogotá.

– Charles Guice Contemporary