LIFE, DEATH, HEREAFTER

Curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman
Presented by NYC Culture Club + Nevelson Chapel at Saint Peter's Church located at 619 Lexington Avenue, NYC.
April 4 - May 29, 2022

Our contemporary American culture predominantly eschews death, sanitizing and separating the inevitable from daily life as much as possible. Modern cemeteries are often on the outskirts of towns and cities, often with flat gravestones, unlike the elaborate and prominent tombs and monuments to the dead in older resting places. In other cultures and minority groups within the United States, however, life and death are celebrated simultaneously, such as with Diá de Los Muertos and the joyous jazz funeral marches seen on the streets of New Orleans.

The pandemic, compounding with the current Russian attack on Ukraine, has prompted a collective confrontation with mortality unlike anything in recent history. Life, Death, Hereafter presents artwork portraying motifs inspired by Christian symbolism that serve as a reminder of the inevitability of death. Other artworks included speak to the regeneration of life through botanical imagery and materiality evocative of verdant abundance and bring to mind the Garden of Eden and the notion of paradise lost. Finally, some work presented explores that which is not earthbound, furthering the idea of the continuity of life into the hereafter. The juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate types of work creates a dialogue that celebrates the entirety of the life cycle and delves into the promise of the everlasting.

Featured artists: Chellis Baird, Nelsena Burt-Spano, Alexis Duque, S. Klitgaard, Katarra LaRae Peterson, Gracelee Lawrence, April Marten, Ariel Mitchell, Anne-Sophie H. Plume, Lina Puerta, Leonard Reibstein, Adam Umbach, and Paul Joseph Vogeler