Death Dance Ritual

Combining performance drawing with themes of grief and mourning to create a death dance ritual performance. Work inspired by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's piece The Class (2005) that challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell where she is addressing a class of corpses. The classroom’s rear walls and floor are covered in taut white fabric, given the room the sinister appearance of a sanitarium or a crime scene. Six bodies lay across the floor on silver morgue trays, their features all but obscured by gently draped white sheets. 

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We wanted to portray a clinical scene with a mortuary ambiance but combine it with gothic clothing and jewellery to transform the process into a surreal portrayal of an intimate ceremonial ritual of passing.

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Long exposure photography by Lucy Anne Bough, edited by Chloé Julia Smith