Acrylic on primed canvas, sculpture
2021


Prolonged Death:
14 Acts of Remembrance



Prolonged Death: 14 Acts of Remembrance is a series of paintings and sculpture illustrating the visceral residues of memories that attach to a person. A homage to her late grandmother, whose resilient spirit continues to live in her memory, Mary’s body of work contemplates the quiet impetus of grief and its mediating role. 

In these painful moments of grieving, the understanding of the person who has passed becomes most generative. Recalling anecdotes, words of advice and confessions, Mary articulates the process of becoming a living vessel for these moments to live on, preserving and embodying a residue of her grandmother’s spirit.

Prolonged Death: 14 Acts of Remembrance considers the deeper, more personal extension of memory-making that stretches the question: whose archive are we most entangled with?

Mary Bernadette Lee, Prolonged Death: 14 Acts of Remembrance, 2021, acrylic on primed canvas, sculpture. Between the Living and the Archive, 9 – 28 March 2021, installation view. Photography by Ruey Loon.



© Between the Living and the Archive • 2021