S Kromholz: And then there was nothing left

Sophie Kromholz: And Then There Was Nothing Left: Creative strategies to contemplate the carnality of absence

We are living in a time where most things which are being produced will not last. In today’s culture of obsolescence, which counters a history of material value and importance, large masses of things are produced to be disposable and ephemeral. Curator Dorothea Arnold, has noted, ‘As we live today, we constantly throw things away, so it is even more astonishing that things survive’. The use of ephemera has not only become prevalent in our everyday production and consumption, but also in creative production. Virtually everything and anything has the potential to be used in today’s art from modern materials, to common detritus, and foodstuffs. The proposed paper explores temporary artworks and how they function as creative strategies to explore death. Ephemeral artworks construct a performance of loss which illuminates what Severin Fowles describes as the “carnality of absence” – what is missing is sometimes as visceral as what is present. Like an ever present cut out in the frame, tracing the outlines of what is no longer there. Specifically, the scope of the paper considers how a certain group of works embody the notion of “letting go” – like an organic memento mori, they bring home that we are but dust and shadow, this too shall pass, and what it is to live.