Grave for Mum

Trying to cope with the experience of personal loss, Irmina Rusicka has undertaken to create the design of a grave for her recently deceased mother. The state of mourning made her search for an appropriate form of commemoration, as far from the clichéd modern-day graveyard stonemasonry as possible. The project may be called an anti-gravestone, as the artist’s concept reverses what we understand as a typical tomb monument. Rather than the expected elaborate overground form, we have a simple, framed stone pond. The solidity of a tomb slab yields to the glimmer of a water surface, welcoming small living creatures and thirsty birds. Moreover, in this way the grave becomes a place which bids farewell to one life and makes room for others. 

However, contrary to the traditional examples of sepulchral art, in which water plays the main role – as for example in the mirror ponds of such sumptuous complexes as the Taj Mahal or eccentric tombs like General Józef Bem’s Mausoleum – Irmina Rusicka’s design does not assume that the surface of the water should reflect any object. In her concept, which avoids pathos and intentional drama, the pond reflects what is beyond its frames: nature, outlines of neighbouring tombstones and the fragment of the sky above it.     

Irmina Rusicka, born in 1990 in Włocławek, is a visual artist, author of installations, video and research work. She graduated in Psychology and Art History from the University of Wrocław, Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in the Humanities (2014) and Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (2017). Within the framework of inter-university exchange, she studied Media Art in Warsaw in the studio of Krzysztof Wodiczko and prof. Grzegorz Kowalski (2016-2017). She won the Talenty Trójki prize in 2018 and WARTO in 2019 in the visual arts category. A finalist of the Grey House Foundation Competition in 2018. She co-operates with Galeria Szara.