Memento Mori

Memento Mori: “Remember you will die.” You may have heard of the 19th century tradition of post-mortem photography: taking portraits upon someone’s death. Often it was the only portrait ever taken of them, their “last sleep.” This project is a meditation on death, and the uneasy feeling that no matter when I die, I will have never made all the art I wanted to make. I know my calling in life is to create, and the inevitability of death only sharpens that urgency. Memento Mori is both a confrontation and a reminder: to make, to express, to sprinkle time with bits of beauty, because it will never feel like enough.

I am afraid of death. Not the nothingness I believe comes after, but the upsetting reality that death can hit anyone at any time. And how sudden death can be more merciful than a prolonged one.

To quote Spill Canvas, an emo band I listened to as an angsty 6th grader, “Heaven’s not a place that you go when you die, it’s that moment in life when you actually feel alive.” Creating art makes me feel alive. So let’s remember that it all ends, and make something anyway.