Patrycja Orzechowska

Patrycja Orzechowska exposes our civilisation’s relationship with the earth by evoking the practices of the Balinese during the ceremony of Ngaben. She portrays the area of a smouldering cemetery with burnt remains left over from the ritual of burning the dead. During the Hindu ceremony, the bodies of the deceased are burned together with animal bodies, fruit and other atonement offerings for the gods. The matter consumed by fire becomes a common cemetery, the ashes are united into one whole. Only the ceramics, in which the offerings are made, has passed the test of fire. The artist, interested in the material illustration of the circulation of matter in nature, with the consent of local communities, placed installations of incinerated remains on the ashes. For the Balinese, the remains are of no importance. The soul has already started its journey. Still lifes—the towers, staged and then photographed, visually resemble the pillars of the work Retrogradation, set next to the series of photographs. According to the Old Testament parable, we have our beginning and end in the ground. We have been moulded from clay, we bury the dead in moist soil, we grow plants in the field. From the ground comes the first technology possessed by humans — ceramics, and from the ground we learn about the past. In the Ashes to Ashes series, the universal biblical phrase equates living and inanimate matter.