Cloud Shadow Spirit , 2013-2014
For many that live in the contemporary world, animal companions have more meaning and value than before. This is because animals have become a way of keeping and sustaining their everyday lives while being earnest companions of their lives. Clearly, not everyone lives with an animal companion to relieve his or her loneliness. Some people might still treat animals as objects of lighthearted amusement. Selected as members of different human families for different reasons and needs, the animals of today live and die with rights and benefits similar to those of humans.
It might be reasonable and ethical to commemorate and to hold funeral rites for creatures that had been emotionally linked to oneself for a long time. However, it is also true that many people still feel that funeral rites for animals, done in the same way as those for humans, are unfamiliar and unnecessary. The funeral culture for animal companions has been producing a variety of issues around the world through different views that range from negative to positive extremes. Funeral rites for animals, on one hand, are recognized as a way of reducing the psychological pain of losing one’s beloved animal; on the other hand they are also criticized for the commercialism seen in some funerals; and in extreme cases they are seen as overt obsession with animal companions. In this sense, I thought the contemporary culture of funeral rites for animal companions is not a subject that is reduced to a level of personal loss and grief but is an issue that should be examined through a comprehensive and sociological perspective.
During the past twelve months, I have visited the United States, Japan, and Korea, shooting photographic images of funeral rites for animals, animal crematories, cemeteries, columbariums, memorial stones (which are also called ‘angel stones,’ a recent trend in the market), and stuffed animal companions. Both the United States and Japan have their own history of funerals for animals that has been going on for almost 120 years. I also chose these two countries because of their significant influence on the funeral culture in Korea as well as the diversity and specificity of funeral of animals. Alongside the two countries, I observed Korea as it has a short history of animal funerals yet is experiencing a rapid growth of demand for such funerals. The sites of processing the deaths of animal companions, attitudes and ways of commemorating the dead, and the types of such places and the activities are recorded in the process.
In the whole process of creation, ranging from inviting participants and finding sites to shooting photographic images, I could encounter landscapes that I did not experience in my ordinary life. I was more than surprised as I met people who expressed their sense of grief in an extreme manner or lost their energy due to a sense of loss they were experiencing. One friend of mine even embarrassed me, comparing the sense of loss from the death of her dog to what I have felt from the death of my father. This does not mean that I do not consider the death of animals a serious issue. However, the conversation left a strong impression on me and provided a significant question that was repeatedly occurred during the process of creation. In short, it was a very fundamental question on the relationship between humans and their animal companions, a question about the emotional environment of the contemporary world, a question that is indicated by such a relationship.
Last autumn, I discovered a tombstone inscribed with the word “Spirit” while shooting images of a cemetery for animal companions in the United States. On the tombstone that looked like a small brick, the name of the animal—which livedonly six years—and its dates of birth and death were written in a simple manner. I stared at the landscape, which looked as if the dense grass growing around were gradually erasing the simple words. Although I could not know what kind of animal it had been or what stories it had to tell, I felt the name “Spirit” as a certain message that was more than just a name.
The title of the exhibition, Cloud Shadow Spirit, is an enumeration of different names possessed by the animals I came to know while working on the project. The seemingly abstract and rather serious words are popular names for pets: Cloud, the soft and innocent; Shadow, the follower of its owner; and Spirit, the sympathetic and communicative. In this way, these names reveal people’s attitude towards animals and their mutual relationality. They are words that vaguely remind us of the certainty of death at the same time. It seemed to me that is the anticipation or meaning of being together with animal companions—the pleasure one wants from the beloved objects, childlike innocence, and the understanding and comfort one needs in times of isolation and deficiency.
Different from cemeteries full of abstract signs that are the names of animal companions, columbariums are another site of commemoration where small sections in rectangular forms are filled with concrete objects embedded with memories. Full of colorful fake flowers and toys, and photos of cute animals, the place is a compact display of different methods of commemorating animals, which are seen in repeated and patterned arrangements.
While I was shooting the images of the place, I met people who come there to pray for the deceased animals and to talk to the animals in the photos. Some people stood for a long time in front of photos of their beloved animals, telling small details of their everyday lives and sharing their worries. There were people who changed the water in the cups they put in front of the photos of their deceased dogs, thinking their beloved animals might feel thirst. Some also left letters every day. In the letters, I found that they mostly called their beloved animals their sons, daughters, little brothers, or sisters. Having been regarded as humans and having lived human lives, the animals were faithful surrogates for an ideal relationship that cannot be satisfied with one’s family members or friends in the real world. Even after their deaths, they still occupy rectangular spaces, substituting for their vacant places. Such places do not exist for the deceased animals; they exist to relieve the sorrow of loss and the unbearable sense of emptiness of those who are left behind. Cemeteries and columbariums give a certain feeling that the beloved objects have not completely disappeared. They are recognized as if they occupy special places, which mediate a belief that the deceased exist in another time and space.
The realm of death is usually separated from the realm of life. That attitude is well displayed in commemorating the deceased in spaces such as cemeteries or columbariums. However, people sometimes keep death within the territory of their lives by having taxidermists preserve their pet and keeping it in their ordinary lives or by having memorial stones produced to carry around.
Preserving one’s animal companion by taxidermy is not an ordinary or popular way of commemorating a beloved animal. Yet the interest and demand for taxidermy has been steadily increasing, and some people think it as an alternative way of relieving the psychological pain from the loss of one’s animal companion. Last year, I visited the Pet Loss Center in Omaha, the United States. The center was built to provide counseling to those in need of help while they recover from the sense of loss, and to arrange special rituals in remembrance of deceased animals. A staff member at the center told me that taxidermy of animal companions was considered an effective alternative, receiving a good response from some people. I started researching it afterward, but there were not many businesses around the world that are specialized in taxidermy of animal companions. Thanks to a well-known taxidermy company in the state of Missouri, I was granted access to the animals processed with the method of freeze-dry taxidermy.
Freeze-dry taxidermy is a method in which animals are dried with their internal organs removed, which is different from ordinary methods of taxidermy. The freeze-dry taxidermy looks as if the animals were alive. In addition, there is a very delicate and subtle process to fix the figures, along with colors that are partly applied to make them look more natural and alive. Despite the limited options in the number of poses as they were mostly lying or sitting, the animals are recreated as natural as possible.
In Korea, taxidermy is rather unfamiliar at the moment. Moreover, to recreate one’s animal companion in taxidermy is shocking enough to give a visual shock. It might be from an obsession or desire to objectify animals and even possess their death. However, what I have felt in the sites of such activities was the figure of lonely humans trying to fill the absence with an empty shell. The objects that were preserved by taxidermy were beings that once existed as people’s friends and children. Although the animals were dead, they were made beautiful by taxidermy, reproduced in ways to look beautiful. As precious memories are recorded in photographs for remembrance, the beloved beings are captured forever in the form of tactile images.
Different from taxidermy, which preserves the appearance of animals as they were when alive, memorial stones(also called angel stones) commemorate the death of animals in a way that is modified and adapted. A growing trend in Korea in recent years, a memorial stone is a kind of artificial crystal produced by applying high pressure and heat to ashes from the cremation of animals. It is a substitute for the traditional ways of cremation where the ashes of an animal are enshrined in a columbarium or scattered in the mountains. It is a method developed to create beads or small stones, sometimes to be kept as accessories for commemorating and remembering the spirits of the deceased animals. In this way, people capture memories that might disappear in vain and turn them into concrete objects in reality.
People hope to experience ideal values, which they cannot meet in reality, through their relationships with their animal companions. The animals are needed for a happier life, and their value is reaffirmed through their deaths. The sites of commemoration and the objects that cherish the animals tell their own stories and raise questions for us to discover the essence of the relationship that we have not experienced yet. For me, I do not criticize or defend certain things through my photographic images. And I hope that the images do not embody yet another gaze that makes someone become the other. What I am trying to do is to observe and record the culture of commemoration in at a distance, presenting the reality of life in our time.
Hyewon Keum
[Education]
2005 M.F.A Graduate School of Ewha Womans University. Seoul. Korea
2003 B.F.A Ewha Womans University. Seoul. Korea
[Solo Exhibitions]
2014 The 12th Daum Prize Artist Exhibition – Cloud Shadow Spirit, Artsonje Center, Seoul
2011 Urban Depth, Ilmin museum of art, Seoul
2009 Speeding Light, Song-Eun gallery, Seoul
2008 On The Blue Territory, Dukwon gallery, Seoul
[Selected Group Exhibitions]
2014 Manufactured Landscape, Art Museum KNU, Daegu
2014 The Republic of Apartments, Seoul Museum of History
2013 Modernity and Technology, Culture Station Seoul 284
2013 Contemporary Korean Photo Exhibition of Four Young
Photographers, Guardian Garden, Tokyo
2013 Balance of boundary, Gallery Woo, Busan
2013 Another Chain Bridge, Korean cultural center, Budapest
2013 8 Artists, Eugean gallery, Seoul
2011 Juan media festival – Metapolis, Incheon
2011 Crack of Image, Seoul museum of art
2010 Returning Seoul back to Seoul, Seoul museum of art
2010 Ideal Beauty and Images, Ilmin museum of art, Seoul
2009 more like a farytale, Daegu art center, Daegu
2009 Paradis Artificiel: Nanji-do Project , Nanji Gallery, Seoul
2009 New Harmony 5*5 , Art Mia Foundation, Beijijng
2009 The City : media scape vs urban scape, Kunstdoc, Seoul
2009 Make up Photo, Vit Gallery, Seoul
2009 Slum Megapolis, alternate space Bandee, Busan
2009 the Irony, Kimi art Gallery, Seoul
2008 Metropolis in Sub-Way-World, Dukwon Gallery, Seoul
[Award & Grants]
2013 12th Daum Prize, Parkgeonhi Foundation, Korea
2011 Selected in Visual Art Project, Seoul Foundation of Culture, Korea
2009 Selected in Visual Art Department, Seoul Foundation of Culture, Korea
2008 Up-and-coming Artist, Arts Council Korea
[Residence Programs]
2013 KHN Center for the Arts, Nebraska city, NE, USA
2012 National Art Studio, Goyang, Korea
2008–09 Nanji Art Studio, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea
[Public Collections]
Ilmin Museum of Art, Korea
Seoul Museum of Art, Korea
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Bank, Korea
Jeju Museum of Art, Korea
[List]