Title of the Work of Art:

The Visibility of Death

Date of Creation:
2022 - 2023
Period-Movement:
Contemporary Art, Conceptual Art
Technique:
Sculpture
Materials:
fabric, paint, stone, plaster, aluminium, rug, pigment,
Dimensions:
70 x 70 x 15 inches, approximate


Artwork Description:
Conceived during a period of profound personal crisis, this work emerges from the shadow of near-total erasure. A psychiatrically grounded digital catastrophe, marked by the eerie whirring halt of an erased hard drive and the chilling presence of a black screen, severed the artist from his audience and professional world. In response to this existential rupture, the artist turned to the sculptural motif of medieval death, conjuring figures whose silent agony eclipses the artist’s own losses. By drawing upon the iconography and symbolic language of medieval representations of death—such as the danse macabre and memento mori—the artist not only aligns the work with a long tradition of employing death imagery to confront existential anxiety, but also critically engages these historical motifs to underscore the process of personal and collective reckoning with loss. This synthesis of art-historical references and personal narrative transforms the work into both a vessel for catharsis and a meditation on mortality's enduring presence. Furthermore, the artist’s conceptual strategies resonate with those of the Young British Artists and works from the Saatchi collection, whose treatment of mortality, abjection, and the spectacle of loss actively reshape contemporary discourses on death in art. By situating this piece within both a medieval and a contemporary framework, the artist illuminates how enduring symbols are continually reinterpreted to articulate modern anxieties and the persistent negotiation with death in the visual arts.