Exhibition
Remembering Baby
3 Nov 2017 – 14 Nov 2017
Event times
Monday - Saturday 11:00 - 18:00
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- 31 New Inn Yard
- Shoreditch
- London
- EC2A 3EY
- United Kingdom
Remembering Baby: Life, Loss and Post-mortem is a new exhibition that challenges taboos surrounding early life-loss. It explores how visual technologies used in hospitals such as MRI, are starting to be applied to certain areas of post-mortem practice – including pregnancy loss and neonatal death.
About
An interdisciplinary research team at the University of Sheffield has worked in collaboration with the British Institute of Radiology artist in residence,
Hugh Turvey and sound artist Justin Wiggan, to design and create the exhibition. Thinking about clinical processes in the broader context of life, loss and memorialisation, the project examines professional and parental encounters with death at the very beginning of life. The exhibition seeks to make these encounters more visible and features a collection of work exploring early life-loss. Visual images, physical objects and sound installations will sensitively explore what happens when a baby dies, from both parental and professional perspectives.
The death of a baby inverts the temporal order of existence. It leads to the simultaneous emergence and loss of identity and personhood, signifying both the beginning and end of life. This exhibition reflects this intersection, offering interpretations of early-life loss that blur boundaries between life/death, body/self and memory/materiality”. - Dr Kate Reed, Reader in Medical Sociology, University of Sheffield
During the exhibition, there will be a series of free public workshops exploring themes related to the exhibition and involving hands-on activities such as knitting for babies and a ‘Lasting Impressions’ workshop for bereaved parents. For more information about the workshops contact rememberingbaby@sheffield.ac.uk
The exhibition is presented in five sections:
‘Sum of Parts’: a large mosaic of square images capturing loss and post-mortem journeys within hospital spaces. When viewed from a distance it reveals a silhouette of a baby.
‘Lasting Impressions’: impressions of memory objects in/on paper made by parents, framed and lit. These are arranged alongside a diffused phonic sculpture which reflects the impression-making process and is created using sound lasers.
‘Handle with Care’: 37 memory boxes containing artefacts that reflect observations from the research fieldwork and interview narratives – items that represent baby-loss/ post-mortem.
'Life Echoed': two sound pods, playing an early-life loss audio piece created by sound artist Justin Wiggan and commissioned by the University of Sheffield research team. The recording reflects lives that never became but ‘live on’/ ‘become’/ in other ways through family practices, continuing bonds, felt absence and memorialisation.
‘Matter of Fact’ – a talking heads film featuring interviews using narratives taken directly from transcripts of professionals talking about their work with deceased babies.