burial womb - conceptual art project
DESCRIPTION
The artist offers an overview of the origins and eventual creation of the "Burial Womb."TRANSCRIPT
Burial Womb:
conceptual
art project
- C. Shoup
“Sometimes a new idea appears in a dream. That’s how this idea came
to me.
“It was 1998. I was living in Logan Square, Chicago. I fell asleep on the
living room couch, and at some point in the night…
“...I was driving on a road in Kankakee County. It was Route 113—a
winding, rolling route that followed the undulant path of the Kankakee
River. It was pre-dawn. I was ascending a familiar hill…”
“The hill crested adjacent to a cemetery. I could see the cemetery’s low
stone wall, and beyond the wall, the rank of marble, granite and
limestone markers. When I neared the cemetery’s end, my dreamy
forward movement stopped, and I was suddenly on the other side of
the wall, inside the cemetery…”
“...at a clearing beneath oak trees. People were gathered around a
great hole in the earth. The digging arm of a backhoe was lowering
some strange object—oval in shape—into the hole. The object was
comparable in size to an above ground swimming pool. Stone pillars
connected its top and bottom ovals. I had no idea what was underway.
“The pillared object settled on the bottom of the hole. A naked body,
tucked into a fetal position, wrapped in some kind of cheese cloth, and
held from the top by a large rope was lowered into the oval opening.
And then with dreamy simplicity the ground was filled, so all that
remained was an oval marker on the cemetery ground. The rope that
held the body had been cut; it showed as just a little cord sticking up in
the center.
“It was burial! They had just buried someone! My dreamer understood
and was excited by his comprehension! I wanted to know more…”
“And then I was in Bonfield, in the cafeteria of my childhood grade
school, and beyond the serving counter, through a doorway into which
the cooks sometimes disappeared was an architectural firm’s office.
“I knew to go into the office, because I knew they would be able to tell
me more about what I had seen at the cemetery.
“When I got through the doorway, a technical drawing was laid on a
desk. I looked. It was the two ovals with the pillars between them! It
was the object I had seen at the cemetery! I was so excited! Now I had
the plans!
“And then I woke up, on the couch, in Logan Square, Chicago, with
dawn’s light just beginning to illuminate the living room. I remembered
it all—I grabbed a piece of paper and pen and drew the plans for the
oval object, and I made notes about other details I recalled from the
dream.”
“I doodled the oval object on and off for a couple of years. At some
point I determined it represented a womb designed for a burial process.
“Therefore, I thought, being entombed in the burial womb represented
a way for life to end as it started. We begin in a womb of woman and
end in a womb of earth.
“Human cultures have ritualized and diversified burial methods
throughout history—the burial womb was one more way to go about it.
Here was a powerful, symbolic object placed into the earth to accept
the fetal body. The body’s natural envelopment by raw soil allowed for
the rapid redistribution of its atomic and molecular elements.
“The burial womb has dogged my thoughts since 1998. In 2001 I made
a scale model. More recently, I made a visual presentation to define my
ultimate plan for the actual construction such a thing...”
The purified human body
folded into fetal position,
enclosed in mesh cloth.
Burial Womb—physical model (2001)
Wood, hemp rope, cheese cloth, clay
Ground level.
Below
ground.
“It starts at a location on my dad’s property in rural Salina Township—at
a grassy lagoon that curves into a patch of woods.
“Among other endeavors, my dad owns and operates a small fleet of
excavators.
“One machine will dig the hole and manage the lifting.
“A documentary filmmaker will capture footage of the entire process for
a subsequent gallery film...”
“A premium burial womb would be made of stone; lacking the
resources for a stone model, mine will be made of finely wrought
wooden pillars and wooden ovals...”
“Illinois state law denies anyone the right to bury—in such a raw and
unadorned fashion—an actual person in the burial womb, so a clay
model will stand in for the real thing. Someday, maybe, this will be the
method of a real burial, but not for this project...”
“The earth is backfilled so only the oval marker remains. The heavy
hemp rope—representing the umbilical cord—gets cut; only a foot’s
length remains above ground…”
“The original grass is placed back on the soil surface. Throughout the
spring and summer the grass is tended. The upper oval marker
becomes the “headstone” location of the burial womb…”
“How can I present this project to the public? I have a terrific idea.
“The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago has two large rooms on
its main floor, each similar in size to my simulated room. I will present
an actual scale model of a burial womb in such a space.
“Viewers will walk into the room and see the burial womb at a sub-
surface level; they will then climb a platform and view it at a surface
level. A short documentary of the Salina Township burial will play on
one wall.
“Construction and completion of this project will be entirely self-funded
through sales of my art and the employment of my own ingenuity.”