7 Days of Mourning

2008
6 Hours each day for 7 days of mourning over the artist's personal losses
ACA Gallery, Atlanta, GA

“In a staged replica of a funeral home in Korea, I wore a black hanbok my widowed aunt once wore for her husband’s funeral. For five hours each night, I wailed for each relative of mine who passed away in Korea. I sang their favorite hymns and exhausted myself to the point that I occasionally fell asleep. Katie Waugh, my close colleague from graduate studies, stopped by each night for an hour to play requiems on her cello. Our performative and conceptual relationship to each other became more refined as each day passed. Her companionship was comforting, her melodies clashing with culturally saturated elements in the performance.

An intimate panorama of the performance was documented with photos and film. The essence of mourning was almost tangible with the sound of my wailing, scent of incense, and melodies of the cello. What I found fascinating was a hybrid ritual that was produced by mixing different cultural traditions in mourning. The performance was about mourning beyond cultural correctness or politics. With a mixture of different customs of mourning, I created an unfamiliar, mysterious, and sensual setting which the audience could not engage in any other way than through their distant empathy of my physical wailing.”

-An excerpt from Hur’s thesis “A Requiem in the Garden”