Emaris-Arts

" Death is no longer another stage in a process that ends in a union with God, it is an ending of everything that our culture celebrates, an unbearable full stop. To admit the fact of death is to admit that we have lost control. We cannot manage the individual body forever ". Chris Townsend, Vile Bodies, 1998, pg 130

Whilst death is a condition of life, the sight of people dying in reality is generally hidden from public view and is a subject which today is considered to be even unsociable to think about.
Religion prepares us well for our impending demise and the thought of a heavenly existence elsewhere seems to almost dominate the lives of most of those who cannot comprehend the possibility of eventually becoming a nonentity.
Whilst not disregarding Heaven or denying it's existence 'All the King's Horse's and All the King's Men Couldn't Put Humpty Together again' is descriptive of the reality of what happens to the body after death and is an exhibition of work which is emblematic of the vulnerability of the corpse and it's lack of authority regarding Post Mortems.
Prompted by the sudden death of a close friend, whose vital organs were removed and kept during autopsy when pathologists were unable to determine the cause of his death, the aspect of autopsy is explored on a universal level regarding the sentiment attached with the personal need to protect this person from harm and the frustration at being powerless to prevent it.
Most people have experienced the trauma and devastation that death creates and will recognise the feelings of frustration and abandonment at the thought of a loved one having to go through the autopsy procedure and having to go through it alone. Not so long ago this person was living and breathing. Scientists have proclaimed that the dead can no longer feel anything but how can they be sure when death is without equal as an experience? Up until the late 19th Century the dismemberment of a dead body was said to deny that persons right to a heavenly existence, what if they were right?
The morgue psychologically conjures scenes within us of a place where the final traces of human existence are erased and is a time where we visualize the body becoming an object of pathological measurement, of dissections and of vital organs being removed from the body for examination. It is a place that represents the body's lack of control and is where the body is treated like meat, without emotion, cut open and dissected to establish the cause of death, to get the facts. There is no sentiment on behalf of the person who has lost their life and is now instead referred to a number rather than a name.
The only reference to an actual autopsy within the installation is a display of used autopsy tools, there are no visible dead bodies and there is no indication of an actual autopsy procedure, instead the viewer is submerged within a dark space alone with an oversized video amplification of a Lepidoptera in a state of entrapment. An autopsy is a legal requirement which requires no consent and cannot be protested against.
The moth or butterfly is seen by many cultures as a symbolism of death, for instance in parts of Europe, the appearance of a moth in a home is a sign of the impending death of someone close. In parts of Ireland in the 15th Century the killing of a white butterfly was prohibited because it was believed to be the soul of a dead child. The Death's Head Moth is a recognized symbolism of death worldwide solely because of the clear outline of a skull on it's back. Death's Head and other Lepidoptera are used within the work not just solely for their metaphoric references to death but are also intended as a symbolism of fraility. The wings of a moth or butterfly are so fragile that they can be torn apart by something as little as rain or reduced to dust by insensitive hands, this is used as a metaphor to suggest the body's temporal status and fraility during autopsy, like glass, easy to repair but impossible to repair to exactly how it was before

Piczo