R.I.P.
A 2019 public art initiative funded by the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation
Video by Joel Tusi
Border Patrol is pleased to announce the launch of R.I.P., a public art initiative addressing the politics and aesthetics of grief.
Just as the collective used the architecture of its gallery's former home in the State Theatre building to inform each exhibition, Border Patrol will draw influence from the formal characteristics of the shopping mall and the cemetery for its newest public art initiative, R.I.P. Beginning June 1, Border Patrol will commission and exhibit a series of temporary and permanent works that will be on view at the Maine Mall and the Highland Memorial Cemetery through September 2019. All R.I.P. programs are free and open to the public.
R.I.P. makes use of the architectural and aesthetic cues within both contexts to address forms of death--ecological, economic, linguistic--within contemporary American society. Each month from June 1 - September 30, 2019, R.I.P. will present one photograph in an advertising display case in the the Maine Mall Food Court by artists Brian Doody (ME), Bingyang Liu (CA), Greta Rybus (ME), and Lizania Cruz (NY). The photographs collectively reference death and dying, landscape, and the role that photography plays in mourning rituals. Within the Highland Memorial Cemetery, the project will support floral sculptures by John Sundling (ME) and a participatory, movement-based work inspired by funerary processions and conceived by Vanessa Anspaugh (ME) and Asher Woodworth (ME). Both sites are places for community gatherings, collective rituals, and public memorials. As such, R.I.P. will culminate with a permanent monument in the Highland Memorial Cemetery. A tombstone with an excerpt of a poem by Imani Elizabeth Jackson (RI) hand carved by Isabel Kelley (ME) will be on view indefinitely. Please visit row 20 section 8 during normal cemetery viewing hours.
R.I.P. seeks to highlight relationships among art, extinction, loss, grief, death, advertising, ceremony, and private property. The mall and the cemetery share many cultural connotations and formal qualities that are essential to the narrative of R.I.P. The mall directory, with its vertical, slab-like structure anchored in its surroundings, can easily be read as an illuminated gravestone or memorial. Its role as a vehicle for advertising in the mall also calls attention to the ways in which capitalism relies upon continual obsolescence in the production of unfulfilled desires -- the death of retail space and emergence of dead malls across the country are two examples of this. In the cemetery, RIP focuses on the materials that reinforce grieving aesthetics. Flowers allude to life’s ephemeral status, while stone addresses notions of legacy; it expresses a future that extends far beyond the span of a human life. The cyclical financial crises, mass extinction events, and the historic weight of slavery are just some of the deaths that contemporary Americans face today. While we hope that our project allows participants to pose questions about the future, Border Patrol is interested in the ability of collective aesthetic rituals to excavate repressed or buried events/stories/facts/histories and hold space for healing to occur.
R.I.P. is made possible through a Ellis Beauregard Foundation Project Grant.
Just as the collective used the architecture of its gallery's former home in the State Theatre building to inform each exhibition, Border Patrol will draw influence from the formal characteristics of the shopping mall and the cemetery for its newest public art initiative, R.I.P. Beginning June 1, Border Patrol will commission and exhibit a series of temporary and permanent works that will be on view at the Maine Mall and the Highland Memorial Cemetery through September 2019. All R.I.P. programs are free and open to the public.
R.I.P. makes use of the architectural and aesthetic cues within both contexts to address forms of death--ecological, economic, linguistic--within contemporary American society. Each month from June 1 - September 30, 2019, R.I.P. will present one photograph in an advertising display case in the the Maine Mall Food Court by artists Brian Doody (ME), Bingyang Liu (CA), Greta Rybus (ME), and Lizania Cruz (NY). The photographs collectively reference death and dying, landscape, and the role that photography plays in mourning rituals. Within the Highland Memorial Cemetery, the project will support floral sculptures by John Sundling (ME) and a participatory, movement-based work inspired by funerary processions and conceived by Vanessa Anspaugh (ME) and Asher Woodworth (ME). Both sites are places for community gatherings, collective rituals, and public memorials. As such, R.I.P. will culminate with a permanent monument in the Highland Memorial Cemetery. A tombstone with an excerpt of a poem by Imani Elizabeth Jackson (RI) hand carved by Isabel Kelley (ME) will be on view indefinitely. Please visit row 20 section 8 during normal cemetery viewing hours.
R.I.P. seeks to highlight relationships among art, extinction, loss, grief, death, advertising, ceremony, and private property. The mall and the cemetery share many cultural connotations and formal qualities that are essential to the narrative of R.I.P. The mall directory, with its vertical, slab-like structure anchored in its surroundings, can easily be read as an illuminated gravestone or memorial. Its role as a vehicle for advertising in the mall also calls attention to the ways in which capitalism relies upon continual obsolescence in the production of unfulfilled desires -- the death of retail space and emergence of dead malls across the country are two examples of this. In the cemetery, RIP focuses on the materials that reinforce grieving aesthetics. Flowers allude to life’s ephemeral status, while stone addresses notions of legacy; it expresses a future that extends far beyond the span of a human life. The cyclical financial crises, mass extinction events, and the historic weight of slavery are just some of the deaths that contemporary Americans face today. While we hope that our project allows participants to pose questions about the future, Border Patrol is interested in the ability of collective aesthetic rituals to excavate repressed or buried events/stories/facts/histories and hold space for healing to occur.
R.I.P. is made possible through a Ellis Beauregard Foundation Project Grant.
Follow R.I.P on Instagram - @r_i_p_maine