Work > MATER DOLOROSA

"We do not die because we must, we die because it is a habit to which one day, not so long ago, our thoughts became bound." - Raoul Vaneigem

Referencing a popular Catholic devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows - one of the names of the Virgin Mary, Mater Dolorosa aims to construct a narrative of personal loss, utilizing a collection of objects and images.

The work uses materials that mark the passage of time - hair, veiling, corsage pins, historical garments, and family heirlooms - materials that are associated with rites of passage. They are the remains of our corporeal existence - prompts to memory, nostalgia, and melancholy. Here, bodies come into direct contact, and in symbolic conversation, with familial objects that function as relics - covering, wrapping, shrouding a faceless form. It becomes an idealized ritual, enacted in anticipation of one’s own death, and an interaction of the living with the deceased. Moving images act as metaphors for corporeal weight and inescapable gravity.

"What we are, you will be. What you are, we once were."