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Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art
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Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 June 2023) | Viewed by 16386

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Cortney E. Chaffin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Art and Design, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI 54481, USA
Interests: early Chinese art and archaeology; Chu culture
Dr. Ellen Larson

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Department of Art History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Interests: contemporary Chinese art; video and new media art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

What is death? Is death absolute? Is there life after death? The human struggle with mortality and the simultaneous desire to both remember and memorialize the dead define our species, but responses to mortality vary. In this issue, we seek to explore how individuals and societies across Afro-Eurasia, both historical and contemporary, respond to death through visual and material culture. For example, physical spaces for the burial and/or memorialization of the dead, mortuary objects, and other evocations of the afterlife, such as contemporary imaginings of one’s journey into the afterlife via computer-generated virtual avatars and video game aesthetics, give us important insight into how death is understood. As is evident across Afro-Eurasia, the intangibility of death becomes tangible via pilgrimage, ritual, and sacrifice, evidenced in objects, images, texts, and performances which have evolved across time.

This Special Issue seeks to analyze how cultures within an Afro-Eurasian context, visualize and materialize death as an effort to mourn and care for those who have passed on, cope with loss and fears of the unknown, and at the same time make meaning of one’s own mortality. This contextual approach fosters a greater understanding of transcultural connections, complexities, and contradictions on the theme of mortality across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Interdisciplinary methodological, practical, and theoretical inquiries, which engage with the visual and material culture of historical and contemporary societies in Afro-Eurasia, are especially encouraged. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: anthropology, art history, archaeology, architectural studies, area studies, film and media studies, material culture studies, and visual studies.

Dr. Cortney E. Chaffin
Dr. Ellen Larson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • art history
  • Afro-Eurasian art
  • death and memorialization
  • the afterlife
  • ritual
  • divination
  • ghosts
  • spirits
  • funerary art
  • place making for the dead

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 28705 KiB  
Article
Escaping from Confinement: Hell Imagery in the Shōjuraigōji Rokudō-e Scrolls
by Zhenru Zhou
Arts 2024, 13(3), 94; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030094 - 24 May 2024
Viewed by 1987
Abstract
This article explores the pictorial representation of the Buddhist hell in Kamakura (1185–1333) Japan, with a focus on a mid-thirteenth century rokudō-e, or Pictures of the Six Realms, preserved at Shōjuraigōji Temple. The examination revolves around how these scroll paintings convey messages [...] Read more.
This article explores the pictorial representation of the Buddhist hell in Kamakura (1185–1333) Japan, with a focus on a mid-thirteenth century rokudō-e, or Pictures of the Six Realms, preserved at Shōjuraigōji Temple. The examination revolves around how these scroll paintings convey messages of salvation by representing the symbolic architecture of the hell realm, the lowest level within the six realms. By scrutinizing the visual representation of hell landscapes in four hell scrolls in the Shōjuraigōji set, the study unveils the architectural symbolism of boundaries and pathways. A visual analysis of two hell-tearing narrative scrolls further reveals that the key iconography involves the destruction of the architectural symbols of hell. Through tracing the concurrent processes of constructing and destroying the imaginary space of hell, the study demonstrates that the conceptual and visual construction of hell is coupled with an equally pronounced intent for hell-tearing. Lastly, based on the visuality of the hell-escaping narratives, the medium of hanging scrolls, and the centrality of an Enma scroll within the Shōjuraigōji set, the author proposes a spatial arrangement of this set of fifteen scrolls that could systematically convey the visual massage of “escaping from suffering in the six courses”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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15 pages, 4146 KiB  
Article
The Corpse and Humanist Discourse: Dead Bodies in Contemporary Chinese Art
by Madeline Eschenburg
Arts 2023, 12(5), 217; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050217 - 18 Oct 2023
Viewed by 3514
Abstract
In the 1990s, a notable trend in contemporary Chinese art was the use of human corpses as material for installation art. These works were called derivative and societally harmful by critics and have been dismissed as anomalous in more recent scholarship. This paper [...] Read more.
In the 1990s, a notable trend in contemporary Chinese art was the use of human corpses as material for installation art. These works were called derivative and societally harmful by critics and have been dismissed as anomalous in more recent scholarship. This paper will demonstrate that the use of corpses was the continuation of a a decade-long attempt to free art from a perceived unhealthy relationship with society through ridding the human body of ideological meaning. I argue that the use of dead bodies marks a metaphorical end to this preoccupation within the contemporary Chinese art world and paved the way for a fundamental shift in the way artists approached society as a whole. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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15 pages, 11607 KiB  
Article
Riders in the Tomb: Women Equestrians in North Chinese Funerary Art (10th–14th Centuries)
by Eiren L. Shea
Arts 2023, 12(5), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050201 - 15 Sep 2023
Viewed by 2402
Abstract
For many women living in parts of present-day north China and Mongolia during the 10th to 14th centuries, equestrian activities were a part of daily life. Women of all social levels were expected to know how to ride from an early age. However, [...] Read more.
For many women living in parts of present-day north China and Mongolia during the 10th to 14th centuries, equestrian activities were a part of daily life. Women of all social levels were expected to know how to ride from an early age. However, documentary evidence for women’s participation in equestrian activities during this period is sparse. This paper brings together materials that highlight the important role horse riding played in the lives of northern women during the 10th to 14th centuries from the funerary context. This study connects funerary objects with women’s participation in polo, hunting, warfare, and the Mongol postal system, among other activities. The synthesis of material evidence from tombs with period texts will illuminate the important role of equestrian activities in women’s lives and afterlives during this period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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16 pages, 6480 KiB  
Article
The Death of Painting and Its Afterlife in Morimura Yasumasa’s Portrait (Futago)
by Kimiko Matsumura
Arts 2023, 12(5), 196; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050196 - 11 Sep 2023
Viewed by 3306
Abstract
This essay performs a close reading of Morimura’s Portrait (Futago) to establish how the artist’s multi-media approach echoes 1980s declarations about the end of painting while also proposing alternatives for its historical and material afterlife. In many ways, the artist’s performances make the [...] Read more.
This essay performs a close reading of Morimura’s Portrait (Futago) to establish how the artist’s multi-media approach echoes 1980s declarations about the end of painting while also proposing alternatives for its historical and material afterlife. In many ways, the artist’s performances make the crises brought on by the emerging global economy visual, and as such pointed to a number of slow deaths: of painting, of capitalism, of Japanese tradition. But the images do not merely document the demise. Instead, they present a scenario in which multiplicities define contemporary being. By considering how the work engages with photography, performance, and painting, I argue that Morimura’s approach to modality pointed out inherently Western assumptions about painting as well as its incompatibility with a holistic global identity in the 1980s and 90s. Exploiting the stereotypes of his media, Morimura makes tangible painting’s complicity with Western hegemony and destabilizes it in ways that propose a new global subject. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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13 pages, 6000 KiB  
Article
“Blast Off!”: The Afterlives of Nostalgia in Su Yu Hsin’s Blast Furnace No. 2
by Ellen Larson
Arts 2023, 12(5), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050191 - 6 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1982
Abstract
In her 2022 video installation, Blast Furnace No. 2, artist Su Yu Hsin explores the history of the German factory, Henrichshütte Ironworks. Namely, the artist focuses on Henrichshütte’s former blast furnace, which was bought by a Chinese steel mill in September 1989 [...] Read more.
In her 2022 video installation, Blast Furnace No. 2, artist Su Yu Hsin explores the history of the German factory, Henrichshütte Ironworks. Namely, the artist focuses on Henrichshütte’s former blast furnace, which was bought by a Chinese steel mill in September 1989 and moved to China, where it operated until 2015. Now a state-owned museum, this former factory, located in Hattingen, Germany, is a snapshot of the past—a memorial of sorts for the region’s bygone industrial prosperity. The history and intercontinental movement of this blast furnace inspires Su’s affinities towards spaces located in-between shifting temporalities, identities, and changing environmental conditions within Hattingen and beyond. Su weaves archival materials, documentary film, and interview excerpts into a speculative narrative that connects the years 1989, 2022, and 2050. Blurring reality and imagination, the video follows the fictionalized trail of Lin, a Chinese translator who accompanied the dismantling of the blast furnace over thirty years ago. According to the narrative, Lin left behind an unfinished science fiction novel, which takes place in 2022. In Lin’s novel, the protagonist develops a utopian machine in the form of a blast furnace. With this apparatus, she sends herself into space with the goal of finding an alternative energy source to replace coal. Blast Furnace No. 2 constellates temporal spaces of socio-political and environmental nostalgia, predicated upon both remembered and imagined understandings of the past, present, and future. The work emphasizes contradictory gaps in between socially driven ideological systems and their afterlives, determined to memorialize what most would just as soon forget. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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27 pages, 22250 KiB  
Article
Mother Always Protects: Two Embroidered Hundred-Boys Jackets in a Ming Imperial Tomb
by Sizhao Yi
Arts 2023, 12(4), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040137 - 3 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1893
Abstract
The Dingling Mausoleum was built as the afterlife abode of Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty (r. 1573–1620) and his two wives. Among the thousands of burial goods excavated from the site are two embroidered silk jackets that belonged to Imperial Honored Consort [...] Read more.
The Dingling Mausoleum was built as the afterlife abode of Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty (r. 1573–1620) and his two wives. Among the thousands of burial goods excavated from the site are two embroidered silk jackets that belonged to Imperial Honored Consort Wang, often referred to as Empress Dowager Xiaojing. With their physical proximity to the deceased body, sophisticated craftsmanship, and unusually festive motifs of one hundred playing boys, the jackets are both fascinating and puzzling. Through closely attending to the visual and material aspects of the jackets, and considering them together with the funerary context and historical circumstances, this paper suggests that these jackets were designed not only to serve the deceased in her afterlife, but also to maintain and strengthen her connection with her offspring in the living world as a means of power assertion and political protection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materializing Death and the Afterlife in Afro-Eurasian Art)
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