Cementerio #4 (Cemetery #4)

While Gabriel Orozco’s practice is rooted in the materials and traditions of his native Mexico, he travels the globe in a peripatetic search for inspiration, collaboration and community. He has developed a particular interest in ceramics, in part because the hand-thrown pot is an object common to all cultures. In 2002, Orozco travelled to Mali. In the remote city of Timbuktu, where little has changed in hundreds of years save the increasing encroachment of the Sahara, he discovered an ancient but active cemetery. Its terracotta grave-markers and spherical pots used for offerings of food and water – scattered in the sand like part of the natural landscape – looked much like one of Orozco’s own site-specific installations. With a sharp eye for colour, form and composition, he took a serene series of photographs of the cemetery, each image charged with depths of personal, artistic and cultural resonance.