Doris Salcedo and being 'socially dead'

I came across the work of Doris Salcedo again this morning, specifically her 'Uprooted' (a house made from a thicket of uprooted trees). Naturally it immediately struck me for my interest in thickets. However, I'm terrible with names, so I was pleasantly surprised to see I'd come across her work before, and really liked it, especially 'Istanbul', where she filled the gap between two buildings with chairs. I wish I could show some pictures, but none seem to be licensed for reuse 🙄

Shibboleth at the Tate Modern

I really like her use of everyday objects as proxies for people- chairs are very good proxies. Maybe I need to think about this again - I did it once in 'Waiting Place', but have moved away from it. In general, I think my work shares the use of metaphor, with objects standing in for people or ideas.

Reading her Wikipedia page, she says:

I have come to the conclusion that the industrial prison system in the United States has many of these elements, where people, for really no reason, for possession of marijuana or things like that are going to jail, where some minor crimes have become felonies. I'm really shocked by the sheer numbers of people being thrown into jails. And also I think it's amazing how this system, being in jail and then going out, has so many collateral effects that a fairly large portion of the population are not allowed to be alive. The idea of having a large portion of the population excluded from civil rights, from many, many possibilities, implies that you have people that can almost be considered socially dead. What does it mean to be socially dead? What does it mean to be alive and not able to participate? It's like being dead in life. That's what I am researching now, and that is the perspective I have been looking at events from for a long time.

I find the idea of being 'socially dead' fascinating. I understand the context in which see means it here, but I feel a sense of it more generally - I think a lot of people find themselves 'socially dead', sometimes temporarily, sometimes more permanently. It makes me remember the time immediately after Carolyn died, when I felt 'dead' - not emotionally or metaphorically, but literally, I felt outside of reality - like a restless ghost walking the landscape.