Designing Death

A multicultural exhibition of funerary vessels and structures boldly addresses mortality and rituals around death.

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Designing Death, an exhibition of contemporary funerary vessels and structures on view until April 21 at Vancouver’s Libby Leshgold Gallery, takes a respectful and multicultural look at a difficult subject.

“I was thinking about the body, what we do with the body and also the rituals around death,” says curator Cate Rimmer. She opens the discussion gently by focusing on the design of “urns and such because it leads you in.”

Indeed, containers from the Polish design company Nurn are decorative as well as utilitarian. So too are bentwood boxes from Cree/Métis carver James Michel. Matilda Borden’s coiled cedar-root basket is designed to carry objects. In fact, it holds her son’s ashes.

Ritual is addressed through photographs and architectural drawings.

The Mahaprasthanam Crematorium in Hyderabad, India, is a series of buildings that reflect the various stages of grief. The final structure features a partial roof. Its sloping walls thrust upwards.

“It’s about letting go and the body goes up to heaven,” says Rimmer.

The Chapel of St. Lawrence in Vantaa, Finland, on the other hand, envelops mourners. Its white masonry and warm cedar fixtures instil calm.

The Little Spirits Garden in Saanich, B.C., is a wooded grove devoted to memorials for infants. More than a mere repository, it has small wooden houses that parents can decorate and personalize to honour their offspring.

Regeneration is a prominent theme in the exhibition. Capsula Mundi, from Italy, shows what happens once an interred body is placed, like a fetus, into a burial pod. Decomposition nurtures a growing tree.

Mourn, from the Netherlands, uses a process that fashions waste water, cremation ashes and biodegradable plastic into cones no more than a foot high. As the cones decompose, the ashes slowly return to the earth.

With the Bushey Cemetery in Britain, the building itself will eventually decompose. Prayer halls are made of timber and rammed earth, and once the cemetery is full and the halls no longer used, probably in about 60 years, they will break down and return to nature.

Unconventional? Yes. Unsettling? Perhaps, but the exhibition shows amazing creativity.

“We have such an uncomfortable relationship to death in North America,” says Rimmer. “We just don’t want to think about it, we put it away. In other cultures it’s much more a part of life. I wanted, in part, to contribute to that conversation.”

Designing Death is the first in a series of events the gallery will host over the next three years on the themes of mortality, spirituality and the passage of time. ■

Designing Death is on view at the Libby Leshgold Gallery at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver from Feb. 8 to April 21, 2019.

Libby Leshgold Gallery (formerly Charles H. Scott Gallery)

520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 0H2

604-844-3809

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