A Beginning of Endings
Burial Sites is a project that looks for what remains after death and examines how we organize our dead. As the laws of physics tell us, matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. Thus, death leaves much behind in its wake. I am interested in how we bridge the divide between life and death through the organization of its material traces. There is no singular way to care for the remnants of a body, but our rituals of burial, how bodies are marked and contained, are deeply entangled with the politics of our living world. The ways in which we are remembered are rooted in how our lives were lived.
When I was 18 years old, what some consider the first year of adulthood, I traveled to a small village in the south of France to participate in an intensive month-long workshop where I made drawings of a graveyard, a profound experience that set the course for this project. When drawing the cemetery, I was struck by the many layers of information stored in the site from social, cultural, aesthetic, and historical lenses. This location became my studio, and I was interested in how I might access this knowledge as an artist. As I continued my studies, I found reasons to periodically visit more burial sites. I then started traveling with the specific intent of studying cemeteries. This project soon traversed various institutions, mentors, and support networks. What started as a curiosity transformed into a ritual, an obsession, and a need. I adopt adrienne maree brown’s idea of emergent strategy, being open to the shifting, swirling, and mutating directions prompted by the questions of my research. Visiting cemeteries became a chance to travel to spaces outside of myself. Over time, this project has slowly revealed its form.
Burial Sites is a project that looks for what remains after death and examines how we organize our dead. As the laws of physics tell us, matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. Thus, death leaves much behind in its wake. I am interested in how we bridge the divide between life and death through the organization of its material traces. There is no singular way to care for the remnants of a body, but our rituals of burial, how bodies are marked and contained, are deeply entangled with the politics of our living world. The ways in which we are remembered are rooted in how our lives were lived.
When I was 18 years old, what some consider the first year of adulthood, I traveled to a small village in the south of France to participate in an intensive month-long workshop where I made drawings of a graveyard, a profound experience that set the course for this project. When drawing the cemetery, I was struck by the many layers of information stored in the site from social, cultural, aesthetic, and historical lenses. This location became my studio, and I was interested in how I might access this knowledge as an artist. As I continued my studies, I found reasons to periodically visit more burial sites. I then started traveling with the specific intent of studying cemeteries. This project soon traversed various institutions, mentors, and support networks. What started as a curiosity transformed into a ritual, an obsession, and a need. I adopt adrienne maree brown’s idea of emergent strategy, being open to the shifting, swirling, and mutating directions prompted by the questions of my research. Visiting cemeteries became a chance to travel to spaces outside of myself. Over time, this project has slowly revealed its form.
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. United Kingdom: AK Press, 2017.