STILL LIFE (AFTER PENN) - 2017
Still life (after Penn’) a body of new work by Adelaide based artist Damien Shen, is a complex interrogation of many things. It seeks to begin dialogues about what is right and what is wrong, about the living and the dead, and the spaces in between, while simultaneously interrogating the practices of museums historically and in the here and now. Equally, Shen is unpacking the role of the artist who works with collections, including those who hold human remains and other sacred materials. As suggested by the title, Shen references the work of American photographer Irving Penn, through both his composition and the breadth of contrast rendered by his choice of tintype photography, which leave his subjects, or their remains, in a kind of timeless purgatory.
Shen, who is Ngarrindjeri and Chinese, has staged each of these works with the particular intention of shedding light on the practices of universities and museums, where these works were created, and whose collections they draw from. These institutions dehumanise remains, and have histories of disrespecting and degrading remains, from the Cadaver Society of the School of Medicine at UVA who would pose for photographs with the corpses of humans, to the destructive sampling of human remains in contemporary museums for academic research.
Shen knows these are not just skulls and femurs, after all, his family and community in South Australia endured the dehumanising and culturally violent practices of having remains and bodies stolen, dug from the earth or taken from hospital morgues in the dark of night by anthropologists and physicians. Although many have made their way home, the remains of Shen’s ancestors still sit in boxes within the collection stores of museums here in Australia and abroad, waiting to be returned to their homelands. The Ngarrindjeri believe that when their people’s remains are not on their country, then their spirit is wandering. So unless they are coming home, the spirit will never rest.
Written by Glenn Iseger-Pilkington
