On mummification and body preservation
Photo at 'POST MORTEM exhibition, nov 2015, Rommelaere building, Ghent, Belgium
"'The Feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.
It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that makes life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is finite."
Richard Dawkins: ‘Unweiving the rainbow :Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder.
Bog Corpses are naturally mummified bodies surrounded with a lot of mystery. In the Iron Ages, the centuries just before and after Christ, the chosen ones were given their last meals of grains and seeds, then murdered in the most horrible ways and with a series of mysterious rituals immersed in the wetlands, the bogs in northern Europe. There are hundreds of these mysterious mummies, bog bodies found in Ireland, the Northern part of England, Germany, the Netherlands and especially Denmark. The lack of oxygen and anti-bacterial micro components in wetland mosses and fungi ensured for the preservation of a very specific leathery skin, bones and guts, but also hair and clothing. The bodies are often heavily deformed due to the many natural residues that covered them in the course of the centuries, but they remained intact through the long stay in an acidic environment, and are thus found between the peat.
(photo: Tollund man)
It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that makes life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is finite."
Richard Dawkins: ‘Unweiving the rainbow :Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder.
Bog Corpses are naturally mummified bodies surrounded with a lot of mystery. In the Iron Ages, the centuries just before and after Christ, the chosen ones were given their last meals of grains and seeds, then murdered in the most horrible ways and with a series of mysterious rituals immersed in the wetlands, the bogs in northern Europe. There are hundreds of these mysterious mummies, bog bodies found in Ireland, the Northern part of England, Germany, the Netherlands and especially Denmark. The lack of oxygen and anti-bacterial micro components in wetland mosses and fungi ensured for the preservation of a very specific leathery skin, bones and guts, but also hair and clothing. The bodies are often heavily deformed due to the many natural residues that covered them in the course of the centuries, but they remained intact through the long stay in an acidic environment, and are thus found between the peat.
(photo: Tollund man)
'Mummies, the bog' 2005This work 'Mummies - the bog' is an investigation of deformations of the body, more specifically the deformation of a head, a face. The main question is, how far does empathy reach, having a deformed head, a heavily deformed face. A personal fascination for the raw inner side of men and the striking contrast between the outer appearances and inner torn. The five heads were carved in stone, on bodies in wood.
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'Mummy' 2005The Forensic Medicine Department of the Ghent University allowed me to investigate a over hundred years old mummified body. I made a series of sketches, paintings and a sculpture. The mummy was cramped, his head heavily bent back, without arms or legs, which he must never have had. It was respect and a last tribute to the vanishing body, which inspired me to create this sculpture.
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'transformations' 2006Transformations' is actually a turning point - I was drawing in ink, scanned the drawings and was experimenting on the computer... the surprising result was that the mummy drawing was brought back to an egg-drawing, just after conception, the cell divisions ... a reverse process from death to life, also the very first link to my sets with embryos.
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In 2015 I was one of the curators of the 'post Mortem' exhibition, held in the forensic department of the University of Ghent. Death was omnipresent. Fifteen years after I found the mummy, I was curious about the state the remains would be in. Back then, scientists told me that the corpse was slowly disappearing, eaten by fungi and mould. What I found was -again- the mummy. Still green and gold because of the fungi, but still there. I made a new work: upright, strong, headless. 'Bodybag'.
