Reverse Grief is a kinetic installation that explores the transformation of grief and funeral practices among migrants from the Global South living in the Global North, examined through the lens of mechanical re-engineering. Drawing from interviews conducted in Texas, USA - home to one of the largest Kenyan diaspora communities with selected participants from the Kenyan diaspora, and investigations on how cultural norms and practices surrounding death and burial are restructured in migratory contexts. It specifically focuses on the distinct ritual patterns that emerge when these practices are performed outside their customary settings.

The installation incorporates custom made casket-lowering devices typically used in funeral homes to mechanically lower a casket into a grave as its central element. By modifying this mechanism, the work reflects the transition from traditional, communal burial methods to mechanized and regulated processes, symbolizing a controlled, respectful, yet inevitable release.

In many diasporic contexts, the established order of funeral practices is disrupted by multiple forces: disconnection from ancestral environments, legal and environmental constraints in host countries, evolving family values, and, most notably, economic limitations. The altered motion of the device, re-engineered to rotate in reverse, serves as a metaphor for the profound reconfiguration of mourning and burial practices that accompanies geographical displacement and the re-situating of identity within new socio-cultural terrains.

Photo courtesy of Fred Dott for Neue Kunst in Hamburg e.V.

REVERSE GRIEF