Memento Mori

Memento Mori x 5 – a vanitas

Art print & mixed media. Sizes including frames: 21 × 30 cm, 40 × 50 cm, 40 × 50 cm, 21 × 30 cm, 21 × 30 cm.

The vanitas works show earthly decay – yet as honest bodily beauty. It happens in interplay with luxury goods – gold, silver, diamonds, pearls – and with empowering symbols such as magic numbers and religious signs. Of course, the luxury and faith these pieces of jewellery hold are hollow. They are made of fake materials with a short lifespan. Still, they shine with prosperity and faith in something meaningful – for a brief moment, on bodies marked by transience.

The title and content of the works carry a doubleness: Memento Mori is at the same time a reminder that we must live. With the wish that an aesthetic realisation arises from looking at the works, we can choose to act more present, loving and authentic in the transient life we have been given.

Many approach life – especially on social media – with pride, staged prosperity and eternal youth as what gives meaning. We adorn ourselves with AI worlds and social media filters, and all the world's beauty products and luxury consumption. This collective belief in eternal youth seems so strong that death is unthinkable and unbearable for most. Despite this belief, the only certainty in our lives is that we will die. Can it really happen? Memento Mori – remember that you must die.

Personally, for my whole adult life I believed I would die of cancer before turning 53 – like my mother did – especially because I myself fell ill with the same cancer at 36. This life lived with death as a waiting guest has always given me a restless but incredibly present undertone: there is so much I must do before I die! Now it seems death is keeping me waiting. I am 53 and healthy. With that joyful realisation in my luggage, I am grateful for every single day from here until I die, like everyone else. Looking at my own ageing skin, I do not experience decay, but a tribute to being granted time on earth to grow old.

The prints

Photo series in 9 different prints. Giclée prints with a visible paper texture. Signed edition of 10 of each print.

The first 4 prints are A5 including white paper (Memento Mori 6–9). The next 5 are A3 including white paper (Memento Mori 1–5).

The Memento Mori prints appear, among other places, in my five-part vanitas work – a paraphrase of the vanitas of the past, which often shows the contrast between earthly beauty and luxury and the prospect of death and perdition.