Doris Salcedo's Hair House Opens at White Cube New York

Doris Salcedo began working at monumental scale only after she started losing her central vision. The Colombian sculptor is now legally blind, with only peripheral sight, and she makes her largest works with a team around her.

Her newest piece, House (2023–26), is a full-sized house nearly 30 feet (about nine metres) long, woven entirely from human hair, according to ArtNews. It is the centrepiece of Doris Salcedo, New York (2026), an exhibition at the New York space of White Cube, the gallery. The show opens on 13 November and runs until 16 January 2027.

Making the house took three years. Dozens of assistants, spread across Salcedo's three studios, tied knots in individual strands of hair. Before her eyesight changed, she made every sculpture on her own. As her condition progressed, she began working with assistants.

Salcedo was diagnosed with Stargardt disease at age 31. It is a genetic eye condition that gradually damages the centre of the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye, which is what lets people see fine detail straight ahead.

Her workspaces were designed by the architect Carlos Granada, who has worked with her for 25 years. Granada was also the architect behind Fragmentos (2018), an "anti-monument" the Colombian government commissioned to mark the 2016 peace agreement that ended the conflict with the FARC guerrilla group. The floor tiles in that work were made from firearms that once belonged to the FARC, melted down. Salcedo made the tiles with 20 Colombian women who survived sexual violence during the conflict.

Her older work deals with the same history. Atrabiliarios (1993) sets worn shoes into six recesses in a wall. Each recess is covered by taut cow bladder, stitched in place with surgical thread. Salcedo began the project in 1991, in response to the disappearance of civilians during Colombia's conflict, which involved both state and paramilitary violence. Some of the shoes came from loved ones of the disappeared. She chose the others by intuition.

The people in Atrabiliarios are never named. Her later installation Palimpsest (2013–17) differs on this point, because names in it flicker into view. In 2007, her Shibboleth filled the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London with a giant crack running through the concrete floor.

For visitors to the White Cube show, the New York run is the chance to see House in person before it closes in January. Tickets and opening times are listed on the gallery's website.