March 01, 2009 - August 29, 2009
Artist's studio
Created over a 6-month period in 2009
Printed by the artist in her own studio
Catacylsm/Catalyst
Exhibited at the Unisa Staff Exhibition in Pretoria, 2011
Voices, loved and idealised, of those who have died, or of those lost for us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them …
C P Cavafy (1904)
Artist’s statement
Few of us have escaped deep loss.
There are different kinds of bereavement. These two suites of prints, created a year apart, were prompted by the loss of two close friends: one who died, and the other – his partner - through a withdrawal from anything that had made the past pleasurable.
In Greek culture there is a formal 12-month mourning period. The first 40 days allow for the shock of loss and intense mourning, while during the rest of the year, the community allows the grieving relative the respectful space that they need to fully feel the emotions of loss.
A further part of the tradition regards clothing. During the first 40 days, the bereaved will usually wear full black, and thereafter sombre colours for the rest of the first year.
This deferential consideration made me consider how the contemporary psychological process of DABDA (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) along with our modern Western expectation to ‘get on with life’ somehow seems simplistic.
To echo the 12 months mourning period, I explored 12 different, more emotive, words to describe a deeper passage of mourning: disintegration, fracture, chaos, bereft, fade, veil, numb, drift, memory, release, gentling and reintegration; one word for each month. And instead of following a pathway, these words allow for more subtle shifting back and forth, more non-linear responses to unexpected triggers.
This resulted in these 12 monotypes. Each black monotype watercolour wash indicates the shape that, for me, spoke of one of those particular words.
This series intends to highlight the cataclysmic effect of loss, devastating, yet inevitably catalysing to some form of new existence.
The monotype suite, The Twelve Moths of Mourning, is a continuation of this project.
Acknowledgements
Cavafy, CP 1992. C P Cavafy: collected poems. 11th edition, translated by E Keeley and P Sherrard, edited by G Savidis. Princeton University Press: New Jersey.
