Undoing History: Skull Drawings
Undoing History is based on a series of drawings of human skulls done over the last several years. They are representative of individuals from a large span of time and geography, emphasizing the resistance to categorization of an individual.
The drawings are meant to suggest the human need, demand, for hope and justice that is universal and extends to all people of all times. It is meant to evoke the individuality and reality of people long dead and our relationship to them; that their skulls do not merely represent death.
The sorrows of history are both individual and collective. Hope demands the possibility of restoration not only for myself but for others as well. What is required is not only restoration, reparation, but an "undoing", a redeeming of history.
Undoing History is based on a series of drawings of human skulls done over the last several years. They are representative of individuals from a large span of time and geography, emphasizing the resistance to categorization of an individual.
The drawings are meant to suggest the human need, demand, for hope and justice that is universal and extends to all people of all times. It is meant to evoke the individuality and reality of people long dead and our relationship to them; that their skulls do not merely represent death.
The sorrows of history are both individual and collective. Hope demands the possibility of restoration not only for myself but for others as well. What is required is not only restoration, reparation, but an "undoing", a redeeming of history.
I am forgotten, out of mind like the dead;
I am like a shattered dish.
Psalm 31:12
These drawings of skulls represent the essential singularity of each life. The drawings are meant to be a kind of retrieval of a normal human life.
The drawings are an attempt to unbind the skull of the person from the symbol of death. They address the idea of the individual, and the disaster of being forgotten.
A man is not unique because of his peculiar talents; a man is unique in the clear and absolute sense that, as is each of his fellows, he is a being one with himself, indispensable, irreplaceable, inviolate.
Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World
I am like a shattered dish.
Psalm 31:12
These drawings of skulls represent the essential singularity of each life. The drawings are meant to be a kind of retrieval of a normal human life.
The drawings are an attempt to unbind the skull of the person from the symbol of death. They address the idea of the individual, and the disaster of being forgotten.
A man is not unique because of his peculiar talents; a man is unique in the clear and absolute sense that, as is each of his fellows, he is a being one with himself, indispensable, irreplaceable, inviolate.
Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World
Read THE BONES THEY LEFT BEHIND: an Interview with Jill Scipione on The Mantle https://www.themantle.com/arts-and-culture/bones-they-left-behind
