Mourning Rites, 1999

Responding to the terminal illness and eventual death of a loved one’s mother, I contemplated the ephemeralness of our physical lives. Using my own body, particularly my face and hands, I drew upon rituals and traditions surrounding illness and death, such as Mexican retablo paintings and Victorian hair jewelry. Some of the images incorporate lens-based photographs, but most of it was scanned using a slow 3-pass scanner, which for me served as a means of embodying the temporality of our lives.