SHAINA GARFIELD

SHAINA GARFIELD

Leaves With You Coffin and Macrame Memorial, 2021. Mixed media installation, with closed caption video, and vinyl wall text instructions for collective memorial engagement. Rope, Turmeric Dye, Dress Form, Black Mulch, Lumber.

Shaina Garfield’s biodegradeable macrame Leaves With You Coffin marks the center of the project space, documenting and  confronting death and dying as  passage, ritual and a vital part of  our ecosystem’s life cycle.  This installation was conceived of and realized for MSRU by the curators in conversation with Garfield as a way to symbolically mark the ritual of these coffin’s introduction to and the dying’s return to the earth in which her clients participate, as well as to make public the memorial process offered in Leaves With You workshop settings. For MSRU, visitors are invited to engage with  the macrame memorial project  on site, holding durational space throughout the exhibit for public healing and ceremony around collective grief, so omnipresent at this time. An online memorial workshop with the artist was held on April 25th, 2021, in connection with the exhibition.