A Project by Laurie Beth Clark
Chazen Museum of Art
Madison, Wisconsin
1 February to 1 April 2012.
os·su·ar·y (osh-oo-er-ee)
noun: repository of bones
from Latin, first known use 1658
“For this project, hundreds of artists will create a single bone, a cluster of bones, or an art work that is inspired by, uses, or plays with the idea of bones. The works may be in any medium, in two, three, or four dimensions. The contributions may be political statements and personal elegies, memorials to individuals or statements about mortality. They may represent connections to our ancestors and/or to our descendants. Some will be serious and some will use bones in a completely playful manner.
Ossuary was inspired by the repositories of bones that have accrued in countries like Cambodia and Rwanda where mass violence has taken place. But Ossuary is not a project about those traumas. Rather, I believe that artists counter images of pain with hopeful or poignant rejoinders. Envisioning hope for the world is one of the things that art can do.” Laurie Beth Clark