‘Aesthetics of Loss’: Normalizing conversations about grief

By Mia Timlin

The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery is currently hosting “Aesthetics of Loss,” a traveling art exhibition which has found its third, and final, home on campus. The exhibit, which holds the work of nine artists, seeks to represent the experiences, processes and emotions of grief and loss through various mediums and artistic perspectives. The pieces will be up through Dec. 10.

Assembled screenprints on Hanji, backed with foam board-variable dimension by Jessica Meuninck-Ganger.

The exhibit is split between two separate rooms, and both feel vaguely like stepping into someone’s home. Draped fabric with a father’s empty chairs printed on it. A coat rack strung with lightbulbs. Sculptures of antique-store objects, broken and glued back together. The lived-in quality of a lot of these works adds to the feeling that the discussions happening in this gallery are very personal ones.

“She’s letting viewers sort of into this very vulnerable space where she’s sharing a part of [her father] with us,” says gallery director Nicole Watson. The piece she’s speaking of is a set of porcelain casts of artist Nirmal Raja’s late father’s shirts, set out on pillows made out of prints of his writings. Her artist statement says that turning these “material remains” of her father into art is a way to “explore his presence in his absence.”

“This ritual she’s created of making art about her dad is something that makes the grief a little more tolerable,” says Watson. “It’s a way to process grief.”

This idea of the process that exists within grief, and of access to the tools to navigate it, is something that Watson felt was important to bring to the gallery, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At the time I was sensing that as a community — as a campus community but also as a global community — we were managing a lot of fear around COVID still, but we were also in this place of, we had lost so many people,” Watson said. “And I just felt like no one was really talking about the immense amount of grief that was just, like, present in society and I think is still kind of present to be honest with you.”

Watson says that she thinks the topics of loss and grief in art speak to so many artists and viewers because it is such a shared experience, even if the processes of moving through and living in it can vary from person to person. Because of this, normalizing the conversation around loss that can often feel uncomfortable is something that the exhibit strives to do.

“One of the things that I think that is kind of a continuous thread is, these artists, really all of them, are eager to normalize making artwork — making visible, right — conversations about death, grief and loss,” Watson says.

“I think all of them recognize that we live in a society where we don’t talk very openly about that and how difficult it is, nor do we talk about how difficult it is to be the caregiver of someone who is, you know, either dying or dealing with a long-term illness. And like, that is a difficult experience that can feel very isolating. So I think in a way the artists are saying, ‘Let’s be open about this. Let’s talk about it.’ It’s normal. Birth is normal. Death is normal. It’s okay to have these conversations out in the open.”

Beyond starting conversations about grief, loss and the rituals surrounding them, artists Anne Basting and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger take this normalizing of aging and dying a step further, with what they call a “Care Shower.”

“It started as an idea two of the artists had when they were both experiencing long-term care for their parents,” says Watson. “They were talking about, ‘What do we need, being in this phase of our life?’ and one of the artists, Jessica actually, said, ‘You know how we have wedding showers when we’re getting married and baby showers for people who are gonna have babies? Like, we need a care shower. We need to have an event where we recognize someone who is moving into that care-giving mode or has been the caregiver.’ It’s meant to be a party and there’s games, but there’s also a space of sharing wisdom and support.”

The gallery hosted a Care Shower the day the show opened. “It was really amazing,” Watson says. “And fun. Like, that sounds weird to say, but it was. I think there’s a lot of catharsis.”

The event went along with the card kiosk outside the galleries, designed to address the realization that there aren’t any greeting cards for the “space between ‘get well soon’ and ‘sympathy,’” according to Watson. Gallery-goers are encouraged to “hack” existing cards by decorating and editing them to reflect a message for those entering into that caregiving stage of life. Along with making a card, viewers can also pick up a sample Care Shower invitation.

“The hope is that this will catch on as a tradition in our culture,” Watson says. “It’s another way of sort of normalizing open conversation about this part of life.”