Burial Womb - Conceptual Art Project

Burial Womb:

conceptual

art project

- C. Shoup

“Sometimes a new idea appears in a dream. That’s how this idea came

to me.

“It was 1998. I was living in Logan Square, Chicago. I fell asleep on the

living room couch, and at some point in the night…

“...I was driving on a road in Kankakee County. It was Route 113—a

winding, rolling route that followed the undulant path of the Kankakee

River. It was pre-dawn. I was ascending a familiar hill…”

“The hill crested adjacent to a cemetery. I could see the cemetery’s low

stone wall, and beyond the wall, the rank of marble, granite and

limestone markers. When I neared the cemetery’s end, my dreamy

forward movement stopped, and I was suddenly on the other side of

the wall, inside the cemetery…”

“...at a clearing beneath oak trees. People were gathered around a

great hole in the earth. The digging arm of a backhoe was lowering

some strange object—oval in shape—into the hole. The object was

comparable in size to an above ground swimming pool. Stone pillars

connected its top and bottom ovals. I had no idea what was underway.

“The pillared object settled on the bottom of the hole. A naked body,

tucked into a fetal position, wrapped in some kind of cheese cloth, and

held from the top by a large rope was lowered into the oval opening.

And then with dreamy simplicity the ground was filled, so all that

remained was an oval marker on the cemetery ground. The rope that

held the body had been cut; it showed as just a little cord sticking up in

the center.

“It was burial! They had just buried someone! My dreamer understood

and was excited by his comprehension! I wanted to know more…”

“And then I was in Bonfield, in the cafeteria of my childhood grade

school, and beyond the serving counter, through a doorway into which

the cooks sometimes disappeared was an architectural firm’s office.

“I knew to go into the office, because I knew they would be able to tell

me more about what I had seen at the cemetery.

“When I got through the doorway, a technical drawing was laid on a

desk. I looked. It was the two ovals with the pillars between them! It

was the object I had seen at the cemetery! I was so excited! Now I had

the plans!

“And then I woke up, on the couch, in Logan Square, Chicago, with

dawn’s light just beginning to illuminate the living room. I remembered

it all—I grabbed a piece of paper and pen and drew the plans for the

oval object, and I made notes about other details I recalled from the

dream.”

“I doodled the oval object on and off for a couple of years. At some

point I determined it represented a womb designed for a burial process.

“Therefore, I thought, being entombed in the burial womb represented

a way for life to end as it started. We begin in a womb of woman and

end in a womb of earth.

“Human cultures have ritualized and diversified burial methods

throughout history—the burial womb was one more way to go about it.

Here was a powerful, symbolic object placed into the earth to accept

the fetal body. The body’s natural envelopment by raw soil allowed for

the rapid redistribution of its atomic and molecular elements.

“The burial womb has dogged my thoughts since 1998. In 2001 I made

a scale model. More recently, I made a visual presentation to define my

ultimate plan for the actual construction such a thing...”

The purified human body

folded into fetal position,

enclosed in mesh cloth.

Burial Womb—physical model (2001)

Wood, hemp rope, cheese cloth, clay

Ground level.

Below

ground.

“It starts at a location on my dad’s property in rural Salina Township—at

a grassy lagoon that curves into a patch of woods.

“Among other endeavors, my dad owns and operates a small fleet of

excavators.

“One machine will dig the hole and manage the lifting.

“A documentary filmmaker will capture footage of the entire process for

a subsequent gallery film...”

“A premium burial womb would be made of stone; lacking the

resources for a stone model, mine will be made of finely wrought

wooden pillars and wooden ovals...”

“Illinois state law denies anyone the right to bury—in such a raw and

unadorned fashion—an actual person in the burial womb, so a clay

model will stand in for the real thing. Someday, maybe, this will be the

method of a real burial, but not for this project...”

“The earth is backfilled so only the oval marker remains. The heavy

hemp rope—representing the umbilical cord—gets cut; only a foot’s

length remains above ground…”

“The original grass is placed back on the soil surface. Throughout the

spring and summer the grass is tended. The upper oval marker

becomes the “headstone” location of the burial womb…”

“How can I present this project to the public? I have a terrific idea.

“The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago has two large rooms on

its main floor, each similar in size to my simulated room. I will present

an actual scale model of a burial womb in such a space.

“Viewers will walk into the room and see the burial womb at a sub-

surface level; they will then climb a platform and view it at a surface

level. A short documentary of the Salina Township burial will play on

one wall.

“Construction and completion of this project will be entirely self-funded

through sales of my art and the employment of my own ingenuity.”