os· su· ar· y (osh-oo-er-ee)

 

noun: repository of bones

 

from Latin, first known use 1658

 

For this project, Laurie Beth Clark has invited hundreds of artists will create a single bone, a cluster of bones, or an art work that is inspired by, uses, or plays with the idea of bones. The works are in many media, in two, three, or four dimensions. The contributions are political statements and personal elegies, memorials to individuals or statements about mortality. They may represent connections to our ancestors and/or to our descendants. Some are serious and some use bones in a completely playful manner.

 

Ossuary was inspired by the repositories of bones that have accrued in countries like Cambodia and Rwanda where mass violence has taken place. But Ossuary is not a project about those traumas. Rather, artists counter images of pain with hopeful or poignant rejoinders. Envisioning hope for the world is one of the things that art can do.