Doris Salcedo: Plegaria Muda

For this exhibition at White Cube in Mason’s Yard, Doris Salcedo is showing Plegaria Muda an installation of oblong tables and A flor de Piel a shroud of rose petals; both bear witness to the lives of victims of torture and murder. Plegaria Muda, exhibited in a windowless room, contains forty-five pairs of tables laid on top of each other, separated by thick slabs of earth. Walking through them evokes the feeling of a graveyard and the smell of the earth reinforces that experience. However, pushing through the upturned surface of the tables are shoots of green plants suggesting that the lives they commemorate have not been destroyed but live on. The enormous shroud of rose petals that forms A flor de Piel fills an entire room and also combines feelings of decay mingled with hope and a suggestion of the ephemerality of life. Photography was not allowed so the image above shows fragments of previous work by Doris Salcedo.