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Posthumous Tableaux
Michelle Molinari
Introduction
"Painter, taxidermist and installation artist Michelle Molinari treads a fine line between death and beauty in her latest exhibition Posthumous Tableaux. Through her exquisite paintings Molinari brings to life arrangements of objects that remind us of the finality of death. Inspired by the Dutch vanitas tradition of the seventeenth century, Molinari’s works seek to investigate the cultures of longing that impel the urge to preserve something from nature’s inevitable course." Simon Gregg, Director, Gippsland Art Gallery, 2018.
Through her exquisite paintings Molinari brings to life arrangements of objects that remind us of the finality of death. Inspired by the Dutch vanitas tradition of the seventeenth century, Molinari’s works seek to investigate the cultures of longing that impel the urge to preserve something from nature’s inevitable course.
Artist Statement:
Posthumous adjective -occurring or continuing after one’s death
Tableaux plural noun -a picturesque grouping of objects or persons
Death is inevitable; it is the collective fate of all, yet as humans we still feel the need to defy the end. Our ongoing quest for immortality; the aspiration to reanimate the dead, or preserve what should have passed are concepts and practices that have challenged our mortality and anthropological belief systems for thousands of years. It is this action of withholding the effect of death that fascinates my practice, as I too confront death through my own inclination to preserve dead specimens.
The process of my work involves physically preserving the skins and corporeal remnants of animals; an experience that asserts itself in the way I view and then depict my subjects. My collection of specimens interchangeably becomes the reoccurring subject of my paintings. Working from direct observation I arrange them in still life compositions creating a tableau that generates and documents relationships created between the objects as they live on perpetually with each painting they appear within. Preserving and replicating their trace through casting and creating bones taken from the specimens, suggests the familiar symbols and allegories of death that allude to the Vanitas and memento mori still lifes of the seventeenth century. Death is ultimately part of each works history and present existence.
This exhibition is an assemblage of specimens, all of which appear within a tableau following their deaths. They live on within these arrangements; defying the natural cycle of death, yet simultaneously they still function as physical and visual reminders of death and its certainty. Michelle Molinari, 2018.
