comprehEND is a series of three large scale drawings that explore how depicting death as a landscape of not-being can work to appease death anxieties.
With the understanding of the impacts of the medicalization of death on western hospitals and funeral practices, it is apparent our relationship to the final natural process of existence has been severed. It is necessary to depict death in a more accepting and positive light and in a landscape we can place ourselves into to combat fears of death and mortality. My intentions with this body of work are to provide those who struggle with fears of death with tools to help bring them peace and find comfort in uncertainty. To quote Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought, “Art’s ambiguous, vague qualities will help us think things that remain difficult to put into words… But art can allow us to glimpse beings that exist beyond or between our normal categories.” (60) Envisioning a liminal, perhaps anti-existential, landscape to depict death allows the viewer to recall a positive visualization of an uncertainty that has been commonly feared. I intend to inspire my audience to step away from exerting fearful energy and take away from my work that death does not need to be filled with doom and horror but accept it as a brand new reality to experience.
