Out of TownerConfronting Mortality:
Shelby O’Brien’s Abject Memorials
by Leah Sandler
above: Communion Photograph Series, giclée print
below: Paschal Candles, Soy wax, paraffin wax, peppermint oil, lemongrass oil, human blood, and vinyl
“Naming suffering, exalting it, dissecting
it into its smallest components—that is
doubtless a way to curb mourning.”
—Julia Kristeva,
When faced with the decision to go forward
with a hysterectomy during her second year
of graduate school, O’Brien began experimenting with canning and preserving in her
Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia studio, informed by childhood memories of
her family’s tradition of canning garden veg-
Shelby O’Brien acknowledges
the horrors of the human body
in abject memorials, crafted using human blood in traditionally
domestic material processes such
as candle-, soap-, and candy-making. O’Brien became acquainted
with the ephemeral nature of
the human body and its physical
existence at a young age, witnessing her mother’s struggle with
chronic illness, and then while
facing her own mortality as she
underwent a hysterectomy in
December of last year at the age
of 25. Profoundly moved by these
experiences, O’Brien focused
her artistic practice on confronting physical impermanence in
a death-denying society while
continuing her family’s legacy
through heirloom traditions.
43
etables in the summer and her own desire to
“hang onto whatever is left for as long as you
can.” She filled vintage glass canning jars with
clear toy candy (a traditional Pennsylvania
Dutch recipe), ephemera from her previous
medical interventions, as well as blood belonging to her mother and herself, collected during routine appointments with a phlebotomist.
The resulting works are poignant
memento mori, memorializing a
traumatizing event particular to
the artist’s life while gently teasing our attempts-in-vain to defy
death as human beings.
While her studio experiments
with canning were motivated by
a desire to preserve, O’Brien’s
chosen materials all contain metaphors for the ephemeral nature
of life, as well—consumable candies, melting wax, and disintegrating soaps. For a recent series
of sculptures, the artist was influenced by Christian and Catholic
rituals relating to life, death, and
resurrection and their symbolic,
material manifestations. Again,
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