Art that Deals with Grief

Why It Matters

The artist’s use of personal materiality transforms grief into a tangible experience, offering new pathways for both artistic expression and therapeutic engagement.

Key Takeaways

• Artist uses personal body parts in resin to symbolize grief
• Alternative photography captures food shadows as remnants of shared meals
• Installation features two strangers meeting behind a barrier, highlighting fleeting intimacy
• Black‑and‑white Polaroids document walks with mother, linking memory and loss
• The process involves physically peeling layers, mirroring emotional unburdening

Summary

Michelle’s latest studio series confronts grief by turning her own body and daily rituals into material art. She casts her belly button, hair, and fingernails, embedding them in resin to “anchor time” and give physical form to loss.

An alternative photography process records the shadows of meals—lasagna and dumplings—shared with friends, turning fleeting sustenance into visual remnants. A 7‑meter installation invites two strangers to enter separate chambers, meet behind a barrier, and experience a moment of fleeting intimacy without fully seeing each other.

Black‑and‑white Polaroids taken on walks with her mother further weave memory into the narrative, while the entire creation process feels like “peeling skin,” mirroring emotional unburdening.

By materializing grief through bodily artifacts and shared experiences, the work challenges viewers to confront loss directly, influencing contemporary art discourse and therapeutic practice.

Original Description

Meet artist Michele Chu. She explores the use of body as a way to hold time. In her Hong Kong studio, making isn’t about producing images—it’s about staying with what remains. Through slow, physical processes of imprinting and removal, the body becomes a way to mark presence, absence, and what lingers in between.

Her practice is multi-layered, featuring these more intimately scaled works made from Polaroids to large-scale installations that invite you to interact with strangers or dine with friends. All of which comes together as a way to process intimacy, care, and grief.