Among the Unburied
March 18, 2016—April 29, 2016
A burial signals a closure, a proper rite that marks an end to life. The unburied among us, lacking such closure, remain ungrieved, or ungrievable. Among the Unburied honors those who are unattended to, even in death. Three artists-cum-storytellers — Mauricio Arango (Colombia/USA), Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw/Canada), and Park Chan-kyong (South Korea) — invite us to consider a world of ghosts as firmly planted in the complex geopolitics and cultural schisms of Colombia, the Pacific Northwest, and Korea. A harvester of corpses in the hour of the moon, spirits evoked by light, and a shamanic ritual — the subjects of these artists’ work, while seemingly fantastic, stem from the very real conditions of trauma and violence that underlie their national histories.
Among the Unburied is supported by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Tuttle Creative Residencies Program. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities 2015-16 Faculty Seminar “Attending to the Dead,” led by Hank Glassman, Associate Professor and Co-Chair in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.