Opening tonight at Rome's MAXXI, Plegaria Muda is a new exhibition by Colombian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo. The installation continues in Salcedo's trademark expressive style as over one hundred pairs of wooden tables are assembled to represent a burial place of sorts. Each brace of tables comprises of one turned over another, with thin blades of grass emerging from the uniformly arranged structures. This eerie scene acts as a metaphor for "sacrificial lives led on the margins of society" and is inspired by the artist's reflection upon victims of massacres by the army in her home country of Colombia, along with research she completed on violent deaths in Los Angeles suburbs.

Plegaria Muda is the artist's "prayer" for those people who, in situations of poverty, have no voice to speak of their existence, and hence appear not to exist. However, Salcedo maintains that the piece holds a more uplifting sentiment in its proclamation of the enduring nature of hope. The plants grow to symbolise life and resurrection with Salcedo stating, "I hope that, in spite of everything, even in difficult conditions, life may win… as happens in Plegaria Muda".

The installation is a living work of art with the smell of the damp earth and the fresh grass combined with the labyrinth disposition of the tables that discourages set paths, arranged in order to immerse the audience in an intense and all-encompassing experience involving the mind, body and senses.

Doris Salcedo: Plegaria Muda
MAXXI
Rome
Through 24 June 2012