traveling exhibition

The exhibition ‘Between Life & Death – Rites of Farewell’ connects life and death. Death signifies separation, loss, and the end of a relationship.

TOPIC

Sorrow is the price human beings pay for their emotional capacity to form relationships. Death is biological, but the emotional handling of the inescapable reality of dying, is a cultural effort. Rites and customs of farewell to the dead are diverse and often exceptional. Most often communal, the rituals offer the living a comforting setting for their mourning.
Worldwide, from the Stone Age until our time, and in communities of the most wide-ranging cultural connections, these practices always revolve around the enduring of the unavoidable.

At ‘Between Life & Death – Rites of Farewell’, the visitors get to experience a variety of farewell- and death-rituals, and also to better appreciate their own part in the life cycle of humankind.

‘Between Life & Death – Rites of Farewell’ is about all of us, and affects us because we all share the same destiny as human beings.

Approach:

‘Between Life & Death – Rites of Farewell’ shows, through exhibits from archaeology, European and non-European ethnology, modern art, and by means of audio installations and dance, a wide range of mourning rites.

A modern, expressive, and subtle design enhances the emotional impact of the exhibition, but also offers exciting entertainment. Individual hands-on- and multimedia-elements, carefully chosen for their thematic suitability,
make the visit to the exhibition also a vivid sensory experience.

Large museums in Austria, like the Landesmuseum Oberösterreich, the Archäologische Landesmuseum
Niederösterreich, the University of Vienna, and further notable institutions, have made a range of significant and eye-catching items available on loan which all bear witness to the millennia- and globe-spanning human quest for consolation from death.

Archaeological burial findings mainly present us with the material remnants from mourning ceremonies of the past. They offer the foundations for trying to understand burial rites. We attempt to approach the interpretation and
emotional meaning of such findings through ethnology, folklore, history, art, dance and music.
Our positioning of selected exhibits seeks not only to show how they themselves interrelate,
but also to highlight their connections to these other dimensions.

A team of renowned scientists from psychology, anthropology, archaeology, contemporary history, medical ethics, European and non-European ethnology, and a funeral orator, all contribute to strengthening the seriousness of the exhibition.