Memento Mori presents new video and photographic works by Melbourne-based artist Cyrus Tang, which document the process of casting and dissolving clay faces in water. The poetics of disappearance are taken to another level by this gradual mutation. The disappearance of these delicate faces suggests a departure; their reappearance a return. Their ancestry, age and identity have been removed through the process of plaster-casting. Their decomposition, slow and ethereal, resembles the inevitable mortality of our existence. Taking an ancient trope of memento mori – a reminder that nothing is permanent – Tang presents the viewer with the process of change and grants them new beginnings.
Tang says: ‘This project moved from my personal experience to the idea of ‘us-ness’; as human beings existing beyond race and nationality we all face the reality of time passing and an eventual experience of ‘ruin’. The videos speak of the ephemerality of life and the fragility of ‘ruin’, what is real and what is not, and whether new life can (through its generation as art) rise up from that which is dissolving into nothingness.’
