London-based artist Marco Chiandetti’s site-specific installation is titled The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? (2016), its name a quote taken from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of 1844, ‘The Premature Burial’. The artwork addresses the connection between the human body and nature, and themes surrounding displacement and the politics of migration.
Intertwining the history of Mortuary Station as a site of mourning and transition with the symbolic representation of birds in myth and legend, Chiandetti’s installation of aviaries in the porte cochere and garden are occupied by Common Myna birds, sometimes referred to as Messengers of God for their ability to mimic human voices. Several religions that view birds as messengers of deities link them to death and the afterlife, positioning them as intermediaries between humans and the supernatural world, divine entities that guide the soul to a spiritual realm after death. Certain cultures consider birds to be symbols of life, fertility and longevity, while others view them as objects of superstition, ominous portents of imminent tragedy or harbingers of death. They are accompanied by figurative bronze and plaster sculptures, and others composed from birdseed. Emblematic of the close, yet somewhat strained relationship between humans and the Common Myna, the seed sculptures act as a food source that is gradually consumed, broken down and destroyed by the birds. The work changes and transforms over time as the seeds make their way into the earth beneath the aviaries, germinating and growing, completing a cycle of transition and beginning life anew.
Chinese artist Charwei Tsai contemplates the Bardo – the indeterminate state between death and rebirth, through a series of works that explore the continuous cycles of life and death. Tsai’s multilayered installation is based on ‘The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo’, a widely studied Tibetan text considered to be a guide for the dying that is also beneficial for the living. According to the text, the consciousness of a person who has passed from this life lingers in the world for 49 days, confused and unable to let go, clinging to life through images, people or events of the past. While the spirit is still present, they are capable of hearing, and so the text is read aloud, describing how in death consciousness separates from the body, encouraging a spirit to release their hold on life.
Echoing the historic function of Mortuary Station as a place of transition and final farewells, Tsai has created a series of works as meditations on death as a reflection of life. Suspended over the platform, Spiral Incense Bardo (2016), enacts a ritual of purification. Large incense spirals inscribed with passages from The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo are lit each morning, burning until the end of the day, whereupon they are extinguished and the fallen ashes smeared over the ground. Scattered over the train tracks is A Dedication to Those Who Have Passed Through Mortuary Station (2016) comprised of objects from nature – dried leaves and seeds, each bearing a word from the text in memory of the spirits who passed through the station when funeral trains bound for Rookwood Cemetery departed from the platform. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to participate by writing a note to a deceased loved one on a leaf, or seed before leaving it on the tracks in a symbolic gesture of letting go.
20th Biennale of Sydney
Until June 5, 2016
Sydney
