Memento Mori
The Memento Mori Exhibition has closed, but you can still view the works and the artists’ statements on this page (click an image to read the description)!
You can buy a catalog from the exhibition here. The catalog includes images of every piece along with the artists’ and curators’ words.
“remember you will die”
The themes of mortality, impermanence, and remembrance in art are so pervasive that an artist need only include symbolic shorthand to allude to the march of time and inevitability of death; a skull, burning candle, hourglass, or wilted flower.
Throughout history we have used jewelry to honor the dead, display our grief, and remember those we’ve lost. We pass jewelry down generations to remember our ancestors, bury people with jewelry, and wear mourning jewelry depicting a lover’s eye, enclosing a lock of hair, or keeping a photograph close to the heart.
More recently we’ve seen memento mori as a call to adventure and a caution against regret; not a stoic meditation on the transient nature of existence, but an exuberant declaration: You only live once!
This exhibition comprises the work of 34 contemporary jewelry artists and metalsmiths. Some artists have shared deeply personal work rooted in both cultural histories and specific experiences of loss and grief, yet there is still room for mirth when contemplating the absurd unknowability of death.
Enjoy the show and remember! You will die.
yolo baby
