Mourning and tears

The history of human civilizations is marked by traumatic experiences of loss, which have produced a wide variety of cultural coping forms and strategies. Natural disasters, accidents, wars, epidemics and old age confront mankind with his inescapable finiteness. At a time when the superhuman seems feasible, dealing with death confronts us with our transience, which overwhelms us when we lose someone and leaves us with the painful feeling of grief. The heterogeneity of the forms of coping and processing strategies of a loss show on the one hand that mourning seems to be a universal feeling, but is embodied in different ways and finds its individual expression. People suffer from experiences of loss and seek successful coping strategies to escape from grief.

In the exhibition LAMENTO – Mourning and Tears, the Museum for Sepulchral Culture dedicates a selection of international, contemporary artworks to the collective and individual experience of grief experienced and felt as a result of a traumatic experience of loss. The artistic works are developed and exhibited in the context of and in correspondence with the collection of the Museum for Sepulchral Culture.