Alejandro Cesarco

Six large, framed prints. This is the work Index (An Orphan) by Alejandro Cesarco. The artist, who hails from Uruguay, created an alphabetically organised index of keywords complete with page references. However, what’s notably absent is the written material an index would typically accompany: the content. Cesarco raises expectations only to subvert them by withholding information. The entries span a wide range of names, from cultural studies and art history to Hollywood stars and terms used in psychoanalysis, all interwoven with detailed entries on the topics of childhood, loss and grief. Why is the actual text that the index refers to missing? What is the connection between the subtitle, mentioning an orphan, and the selection of entries in the index? Is this about a story that is deliberately untold, or one that ought to be told differently? Who was this index made for? 

It is a unique feature of humans that we tell each other stories – to understand the world, process experiences, share our knowledge. Alejandro Cesarco challenges the narrative convention of telling a story in linear order, with its set pattern of beginning, middle and end. Instead, he offers a different approach to storytelling. For more than 24 years, he has created indices for books that don’t exist and will very likely never be written. By presenting us with the keywords and page numbers, he invites us to develop the missing stories ourselves, blending memories, facts and imagination, thereby creating our own unique stories that may not have a clearly identifiable beginning or conclusion.