Silicone, Aluminium, artist's hair, polymer clay
Silicone, Aluminium, artist's hair, polymer clay
Silicone, Aluminium, artist's hair, polymer clay
Post-mortem
2020, Silicone, Aluminium, Artist's hair, Polymer clay, 100cm x 50cm x ~95cm
Post-mortem explores disassociation with the human body after death, highlighting societal desensitisation to death and further; mutilation. With a saturated exposure to morbidity through television, film, books, and other forms of media, human interactions and perceptions toward the post-mortem body have become more blatantly associated with trivial entertainment. My work is reflective of this dehumanisation of the human body, manifesting a clinical quality in the depiction of a segmented anatomical form upon a self-constructed mortuary table.
In developing Post-mortem, I aimed to investigate a change in mentality towards an individual, post-mortem. This change in mindset is reflective of objectifying the deceased such as viewing them as an object, ‘a body’, rather than a being. This derived from an overall exploration of death through a scientific lens, which was investigated due to my own long-standing, strong interest in biological and medical sciences, and my own personal intrigue and fascination with death, in all its morbidity. Future aspirations of mine include working in the field of forensic science, such as forensic pathology/medicine; a key reason for this conceptual exploration.