ARTISTS TALKING

On walking into the ICIA in Bath University to view Margareta Kern’s exhibition ‘Clothes for Death’, I was disappointed to find most of her photographic works and one of her video works obstructed by the temporary boarding and marketing banners of a digital enterprise conference taking place in the university.

This lack of respect for the presentation of Kern’s work is made even more frustrating considering the insightful and revealing content of her photographic and video portraits of the women of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who follow the local tradition of making and preparing their own burial clothes and those of their loved ones.

Rather than revealing a mournful and sombre tradition, works such as the video installation Ana illustrate a culture where death is not restricted to clinical hospital spaces but, perhaps due to the region’s history of violence and turmoil, is part of everyday domestic life. This video monitor work installed into a tall white plinth recalls the classical qualities of a memorial tablet, yet its contents are informal and conversational as Ana talks frankly to the camera, displaying proudly the multitude of clothing items such as knickers and black socks which she will wear when she dies.

Equally Kern’s series of colour photographs of women sitting in their bedrooms and living rooms surrounded by their own funeral clothes suggest a franker and more intimate relationship with their own mortalities – with each woman’s chosen clothing and the décor of their own home environments hinting at their individual personalities. While some women have chosen starker black and white cloth for their final garments, the portrait of Mila (Banjica, Bosnia and Herzegovina), shows her sitting contentedly in her front room with bright multi-coloured fabrics laid out upon her sofa. Mila herself sits in quiet repose with a slight smile on her face. The artist has depicted all her subjects with great dignity, allowing the images to speak for themselves, creating a real sense of these women’s lives as well as their preparations for their deaths.