49th Day Memorial

What the 49th Day Memorial does is simply a sublimation of emotional burden. During the 49 days, families of deceased finally get to face sudden loss of their beloved by sharing memories amongst them, as well as time to resolve possible feuds amongst family members upon the time frame. On a 49th day, a ritual ends with prayer to otherworldly sprits or deities for safe trip in afterlife and wishes them best of luck. That very act becomes a moment of sublimation, and perhaps the residue that continues lives on after the end of ritual will become memory of the person or the burden that survived has to carry on.

Memory works the similar way. Buried or repressed memories will decay through time while person has successfully managed one’s life with or without part of them. At the end, all we will have is the core of the issues, and understand or forgiveness can only happen after revealing what was underneath the problem. Artist mocks aesthetically the passing of time by raising moth on top of an object, and then by physically damaging an object, he mimics the process of decay. As the installation reenacts discovering of abandoned and buried memories, last part of performance materializes immaterial part of human being as pseudo-scientific specimen.

The pain will be looked over. Within a passing of time, memory only is just a residue that will be observed.