Chloe Osborne & Steven Aron Williams
@mortal_made25

How do we Mortals bring death into the sensory and familiar and sit friendly with it… 

Chloe has been holding arts-led spaces to explore grief and death since 2020, when for many it felt that death got so much closer. It sat differently, crouching on handrails and drifting in the air, infecting thoughts and ways of being. It was no longer an ostracized relative in a far flung land but a close family member, sharing a bathroom.

Chloe is becoming a serial eulogist and doesn’t like it. There aren’t enough words.

"What if we, as makers, doers, thinkers, sleepers and eaters found ways to hold ourselves and each other in grief?
What if we found and shared ways to fit the rage and grief, of genocide far away and arms made next door, inside our bodies? What if we could do this and still keep moving?

Yes to words but… yes to more, too."

Steven is a visual artist whose curiosity with death stems from what he sees as a cultural paralysis which afflicts the society he grew up in. Death and grief are swept under the carpet, stoicism prevails. Everything is just dealt with efficiently, the colourful craziness of life discarded. There is such a massive disconnect between the living and the dead.

His traveling has opened his eyes to the attitudes, rituals and traditions of other cultures that feel more honest and human. Perhaps too honest in some instances but he believes there is so much we can learn and take solace in.

It has also led him to contemplate his own inevitable exit. The funerals he has attended over the years (he avoids them if possible) each had a prescribed monotony that didn’t seem to really reflect the people lost. It’s such a shame and made the occasions far more traumatic than they already were.

"If our exits were really contemplated, planned and shared whilst we’re still full of life, perhaps they would be more life-affirming experiences for those left behind?"