Lynn Bianchi: A Prayer for the Dead

Exhibiting Artist(s):

• Lynn Bianchi

In A Prayer for the Dead, subjecting the body to the purifying power of water evokes ideas and feelings of renewal and cleansing. This project started as an impulse to communicate through water. It slowly took form in its attempt to portray the universal experience of release. Unexpectedly, the work mirrored rituals of which I wasn’t aware, like the Buddhist funerals, where “water is poured into a bowl placed before the monks and the dead body. As it fills and pours over the edge, the monks recite: ‘As the rains fill the rivers and overflow into the ocean, so likewise may what is given here reach the departed’.”