Art as a catalyst for ethical reflection on death, autopsy, and human remains in museums
Halina Suwalowska (1), David Morris (2), Anna Suwalowska (3), Luba Kozak (4)
(1) Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, UK
(2) Honorary Research Associate, McGregor Museum Kimberley and Visiting Professor, School of Humanities, Sol Plaatje University, South Africa
(3) Artist, founder of Beyond Physical Form platform
(4) University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Cite this Article
Suwalowska, H., Morris, D., Suwalowska, A., & Kozak, L. (2025). Art as a catalyst for ethical reflection on death, autopsy, and human remains in museums. p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e, 8.
Abstract
This article examines the role of art in confronting complex ethical issues related to postmortem procedures and human remains in museums. Through an exploration of two interdisciplinary projects – Beyond the Body: A Portrait of an Autopsy (2019) and Homage to the Departed (2023) – the article highlights how art can engage the public in dialogue about the ethical, socio-cultural, and scientific dimensions of death. Death and the handling of bodies often invoke deep-seated taboos, influenced by cultural, religious, and moral beliefs. Autopsies, for example, are seen as both a scientific necessity and a cultural violation. The ethical issues arising from the display, collection and depiction of human remains in museums and galleries are not only questions of legal rights or academic enquiry but also of cultural memory, identity, and spiritual beliefs. Through visual narratives and metaphor, these art projects challenge traditional notions of death and the dead body, creating a space for empathy, ethical reflection, and connection. By recontextualising death in an artistic setting, the projects advocate for bridging science and ethics and prompting a reassessment of our engagement with mortality.
Keywords
art, ethics, human remains, autopsy, museums, exhibitions
INTRODUCTION
This article explores art as a catalyst for reflecting on challenging ethical questions and taboos surrounding death and dead bodies. We focus on two collaborative projects: Beyond the Body: A Portrait of an Autopsy (2019) and Homage to the Departed – ethical issues in human remains (2023). Both interdisciplinary projects use art to engage the public in dialogue about the ethical, socio-cultural, religious, and scientific facets of death and the dead body.
Although distinct in scope and setting, the two projects are linked by overlapping contributors. Anna Suwalowska (founder of the platform Beyond Physical Form) served as the primary visual artist in Beyond the Body (2019) and later as creative director in Homage to the Departed (2023), while social scientist Dr Halina Suwalowska (University of Oxford) initiated and co-led both. Archaeologist Prof David Morris collaborated in Homage to the Departed through the McGregor Museum, which had also hosted elements of Beyond the Body. This continuity reflects an evolving interdisciplinary partnership across art, ethics, and heritage, allowing themes from one project to inform and enrich the other while maintaining each as a separate artistic and research project.
The subject of death and dead bodies in different societies is suffused with taboos that are deeply rooted in cultural, religious, and moral beliefs (Huntington & Metcalf 1979, Engelke 2019). As a result, discussions and engagements around the handling of dead bodies have traditionally been confined to medical professionals and specialists, creating a disconnect between the public and this significant subject matter (Howarth 2007). Within medicine and science, the dead body has long been central to learning, from anatomical dissection in medical schools to pathological investigations of disease. Corpses have functioned as vital teaching tools and sites of discovery, yet this utilitarian framing often sidelines their social and spiritual meanings. At the same time, scientific handling of bodies has historically intersected with questions of power, consent, and exploitation, especially in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
Similar ethical tensions arise in museums, where human remains are often displayed or preserved as part of collections. In these contexts, the body is reconfigured as heritage, shifting from a once-living person into an object of scientific, educational, or aesthetic value. The question of whether human remains should be curated, repatriated, reburied, or displayed continues to provoke debate, raising complex issues of cultural memory, spiritual belonging, and the responsibilities of institutions toward the dead (Jenkins 2016).
The relationship between art and medicine has long been intertwined, addressing both the spiritual and physical needs of societies (Panda 2006). Both are rooted in a pursuit of health and healing grounded in principles of care and compassion. Medicine requires the art of care, blending technical skill with empathetic practice. Similarly, art is not only therapeutic and educational but also engages the spiritual and imaginative faculties of the human mind, articulating abstract ideas that challenge conventional modes of knowledge (Gilbert 2022). Art can be understood as a vehicle for the psyche, visually translating human experiences and helping us cope with complex issues such as death and grief. Moreso, art can also be useful in expressing how various cultures and communities navigate distressing experiences like suffering, disease, and death, fostering a sense of unity through the shared experience of mortality while also highlighting diverse perspectives and approaches.
Moreover, there are also ethical implications in the portrayal of culturally specific death practices, many of which hold sacred significance. From mummification rituals in Egyptian funerary art to surgical procedures common in Western medicine such as dissection in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joan Deyman (1656), artworks have immortalised medical interventions, cultural norms, and customs for handling the dead (Parra 2024).
This article argues that art can bridge the disconnect between professionalised practices of death and a wider public understanding by offering new perspectives, whereby the dead body is not merely a site for the medicalisation of death but a site for dialogue about mortality. Reframing dead bodies within an artistic context opens new avenues for expression while urging audiences to engage with the ethical responsibility to care for others, including those no longer alive. In this sense, art operates as a visual roadmap, guiding us through seemingly opposing concepts of science and spirituality, the intimate and the public, life and death helping us to (re)connect with ourselves and others.
This article draws on ethics of care and affect theory as interpretative lenses for reflecting on and engaging with images of death and representations of deceased bodies in artistic contexts.
BUILDING CARING RELATIONSHIPS: ETHICS OF CARE AND AFFECT THEORY
How can spectators resonate with deceased bodies? Combining care ethics with resonance and affect theory provides a fruitful approach. Both frameworks offer a more holistic approach by rejecting detached, objective views in favour of relational accountability and to value emotional connections. By prioritising the notion of social responsibility, these frameworks encourage viewers to be vulnerable in order to connect with others (including the deceased) on a deeper level. This approach destabilises the binary divides between the living and the dead, inviting a more empathetic, imaginative, and ethically responsive encounter with death where art can serve as a catalyst for ethical reflections. Together, the complimentary frameworks of ethics of care and affect theory challenge power dynamics embedded in representations of the dead by offering a space to consider not only what is shown, but also how it is felt and who is affected. Interpretation is grounded in close reading of artworks, curatorial materials, and recorded audience interactions, situated within existing scholarship on art, death, and heritage ethics.
Ethics of care is both a value and a practice that brings attention to the needs of others by embracing the influence of emotions (Held 2006, 10). Care ethics prioritises interpersonal relationships, while affect theory complements this by contributing new perspectives to how audiences can resonate with deceased bodies through art. One of the key founders of care theory, Nel Noddings (2013, 5) describes care ethics as a personal experience between the caregiver (audience) and the cared-for (deceased body). Scholar Vivienne Bozalek (2016, 195) emphasises that attentiveness – a key aspect of care – involves being open to being affected by others. Furthermore, Maria de la Bellacasa (2012, 198) notes that caring and relating share conceptual and ontological resonance.
Although affect theory, particularly in the humanities, remains a developing concept, it can be defined as an approach that allows “feelings to speak for themselves” (Figlerowisz 2012, 3). Seventeenth-century philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza defined affect theory in relation to the body as requiring vulnerability to experience being affected. Vulnerability is central to care ethics, which accepts the notion of uncertainty about the kind of responses that come from connecting with others, especially the dead who are unknowable to the living. As Jacqueline Millner (2024) argues, an openness to vulnerability that is supported through care ethics creates the potential for renewed solidarity between beings. This connection, however, relies on an imagined relationship that is deeply felt, rather than strictly physically experienced, with the deceased.
Affect theory is fundamentally concerned with power relations and as proposed by psychologist Silvan Tomkins, is based on the nonverbal repertoire and the body’s role as an instrument (Schaefer n.d.). The body thus becomes a site for applying affect and resonance theory. As Anne Bogart (2020, 2) writes, “Humans are resonating bodies that vibrate and fluctuate, and each of us gains our identity through the quality of our relationships to experience outside of ourselves.” Affect theory also depends on relationships of trust, which is a core principle in care ethics, and “requires an awareness of different power dynamics and an ability to initiate and sustain connections” (Bozalek 2016, 197).
This is especially true when considering the power dynamics between the living and the dead. Art plays a crucial role in bridging the divide between the living and the dead by repositioning the dead in a role of power, allowing them to emotionally impact the living as a form of communication, dissolving the barriers between the physical and spiritual realms. Lori Gruen (2013, 223) defines the concept of “entangled empathy” as a caring perception that is focused on the needs and wellbeing of others, requiring a process of blending emotion and cognition to recognise our relational responsibilities. To care about another’s interests, desires, hopes and sensitivities, requires both imagination and reflexivity. This is further complicated when it is the living considering the needs of the deceased, who are vulnerable because they cannot advocate for themselves.
TABOO, AUTOPSY AND ETHICAL REFLECTION: BEYOND THE BODY: A PORTRAIT OF AUTOPSY (2019)
Autopsy, often described as ‘learning from the dead,’ occupies a privileged yet liminal space where observers seek answers to critical questions: What caused this death? How might such deaths be prevented in the future? Autopsies are vital to medicine and science, revealing pathogens, hereditary conditions, and other hidden causes of death. Yet these same practices raise profound ethical dilemmas. For some, autopsy represents a violation of the sanctity of the dead, provoking fears of mutilation or desecration (Burton & Underwood 2007; Charlier et al. 2013). The body, in this view, is not an object to be dissected but a sacred symbol of the person who once lived, deserving respect and care.
Such concerns are not merely matters of personal discomfort but are deeply rooted in cultural, religious, and moral beliefs (Huntington & Metcalf 1979; Engelke 2019). Religious and social norms often dictate that the dead be allowed to rest undisturbed, making autopsy not only undesirable but morally offensive (Banyini et al. 2013). Islamic traditions for instance emphasise burial of the body intact (Abbasi 2017), while Jewish law upholds the inviolability of the corpse after death (Breitowitz 2001). In African contexts, the body may be seen as inseparable from ancestral spirit, making invasive procedures particularly problematic (Fontein 2010). Even where such beliefs are not religiously framed, autopsies may be resisted on the grounds of dignity and the integrity of the deceased (Burton & Underwood 2007).
These objections highlight how the treatment of the dead resonates profoundly with those left behind, who wish for loved ones to be handled in accordance with cultural and spiritual values. Autopsy also raises further ethical questions of consent and privacy: should the rights of the living to know the cause of death outweigh the right of the deceased to privacy (Vall & Zwijnenberg 2009)? The idea of cutting a body open, whether for autopsy or anatomical study, remains one of the most enduring taboos across societies. As a result, conversations about death and the handling of human remains have long been confined to medical professionals and specialists, creating a disconnect between the public and this significant, but often hidden, dimension of human experience (Howarth 2007).
It is these cultural, ethical, and scientific tensions that Beyond the Body: A Portrait of Autopsy brings into focus. A collaboration between artist Anna Suwalowska and social scientist Halina Suwalowska, the project explores the dilemmas surrounding autopsy across different cultures. Drawing on Halina’s research on the complexities of caring for the dead in a global health context (Suwalowska et al., 2023) Anna created four large-scale mixed media works that weave together the voices and experiences of those involved in post-mortem practice.
The exhibition unfolds a visual narrative of the tensions that arise when the body becomes both a site of scientific enquiry and a vessel of memory and meaning. It presents a spectrum of perspectives: a pathologist questioning whether the rights of the living to know the cause of death outweigh the rights of the deceased to privacy; a Buddhist priest reflecting on the five elements that structure both death and the universe; and a scientist developing less invasive procedures for children to minimise disfigurement, recalling the difficult conversations with grieving parents that accompany such decisions.
By placing these contrasting perspectives side by side, Beyond the Body foregrounds the central ethical issue of consent. It also demonstrates an ethics of care approach, where navigating consent involves attentiveness not only to the dead but to the emotional needs of grieving families and communities. Within a single family or even a community, conflicting views may emerge, creating barriers to reaching agreement on how best to respect the dead. More, the debate about consent extends beyond the wishes of surviving relatives: it also encompasses respect for the wishes of the deceased themselves, as well as broader cultural and spiritual understandings of the relationship between body, soul, and self.
Beyond the Body transforms the clinical and often hidden practice of autopsy into a site of public ethical reflection. Through affective imagery, it invites viewers into a relational encounter with the dead body; an affective connection that destabilises detachment and enables ethical reflection grounded in care. The exhibition toured internationally and engaged diverse audiences, including medical professionals, scientists, artists, and the public, demonstrating how art can create new spaces for dialogue, helping different societies confront taboo questions about care, dignity, and meaning in relation to death.
Figure 1. Anna Suwalowska, Portrait of Autopsy, Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 90cm x192cm, in Beyond the body.
Figure 2. Anna Suwalowska, Cycle of life, Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 160cm x192cm, in Beyond the body.
Figure 3. Anna Suwalowska, Significance of the Body, Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 160cmx192cm, in Beyond the body.
Figure 4. Anna Suwalowska, Autopsy in Medicine and Science, Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 160cmx192cm, in Beyond the body.
HOMAGE TO THE DEPARTED – ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR HUMAN REMAINS IN MUSEUMS (2024)
Homage to the Departed – Ethical Considerations for Human Remains in Museums serves as a case study in how art can facilitate ethical reflection and critical appraisal of museums and their practices. The project was directed by artist Anna Suwalowska and developed in partnership with Prof David Morris representing the McGregor Museum in South Africa and Dr Halina Suwalowska guiding the ethical framework. Together they worked alongside five Kimberley-based emerging artists: Andrea Chounyane, Junior Oliphant, Excellent Katlego Squire, Sureyyah Naledi Moroka, and Mogomotsi Makukumare to create a platform where art, ethics, and archaeology converged.
Through this project, artists were invited to engage with the ethical implications of displaying or holding human remains and artefacts in museums. These practices generate on-going debate (Woodhead 2013; Fletcher, Antoine & Hill 2014), with critics questioning whether artistic freedom can be reconciled with respect for the dead (Afolabi et al. 2023).
The ethical issues arising in museums are not only questions of legal rights or academic enquiry but also of cultural memory, identity, and spiritual beliefs. In many cultures, human remains are inseparable from concepts of personhood, ancestry, and spiritual presence (Fontein 2010; Mead 2003; Fine-Dare 2002; Tarlow 2002). For example, among the Shona in Zimbabwe, ancestral bones are regarded as living presences that connect the living to their forebears (Fontein 2010). For the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand, kōiwi tangata (ancestral remains) are tapu, embodying genealogy and spiritual responsibility (Mead 2003). Similarly, many Native American communities understand ancestral remains as living relatives, a perspective that underpins repatriation movements such as NAGPRA in the United States (Fine-Dare 2002). Even within medieval Christian Europe, relics of saints were venerated as enduring extensions of personhood and spiritual power (Tarlow 2002).
Museums must navigate these issues and sensitivities and negotiate with communities (and post-colonial nations) over the curation and repatriation of what are today mainly legacy collections that include skeletons (in some cases numbering tens of thousands) acquired earlier in the histories of these institutions (e.g. Redman, 2016). These are not mere specimens but individuals deserving of dignity, respect, and repatriation and reburial (Ciliberti et al., 2021), including processes of re-humanisation (Rassool, 2015). Treated historically as objects for scientific (race-based) study, and put on display, the acquisition of human remains invariably neglected the cultural, spiritual, and personal significance they hold for their communities of origin (Ciliberti et al., 2021). This Western-centric approach, rooted in colonial histories, has produced ethical dilemmas that remain unresolved.As Marta Licata and colleagues observe,
Studying and showing death means not only knowing and making one of the most intimate aspects of humanity known, but also measuring oneself with social preconceptions and psychological obstacles, educating them to reflect on them (2020, 2).
Examples of four artworks created by the artists for the Homage to the Departed project[1].
Figure 5. Excellent Katlego, Shadows of the memory, charcoal on Fabriano paper, in Homage to the Departed.
“The work I have done depicts expressionism with surrealism. With all the strong lines and the exaggerated long arms with sharp fingers the art symbolises the Karoo or Kalahari life. The early life in the Northern Cape is where the Khoi people live. The woman is mixed with a blue crane and eating with her hands. There was no fancy cutlery, but they had things to hunt with. Like the arrows and sharp objects. The laying figure is an animal killed by hunting as it was done back then, with plants growing behind. The symbol of after death, there is still life. The woman’s body is also something I saw of a “Naron woman near Xangas, Kalahari, 1936” at the McGregor Museum. So I just depicted it with a pot just to show the shape but did not draw it here as people back then saw them. It was a little bit of respect to the history and the dead. Next to the women, there are drawings on rocks of their stories, the connection with her and her history. The rocks tell the stories of what happened in the spiritual world. Just as I have added a skeleton hand for death. The plant I have visualised can be the silver Karoo, which grows in harsh and dry places.”
Figure 6. Mogomotsi Makukumare, Skeletons are not objects, charcoal on Fabriano paper, in Homage to the Departed.
“This piece shows that the dead should be respected because skeletons have spirits around them. The miniature little Skeleton in the eye is how ancient people used to be buried. The people walking around symbolise the spirit around the bones, with the spiritual eye having the power to see what the physical eye cannot see. In my language Setswana, we say “batho ba tlhokahala,” meaning people go missing in the physical world (meaning only their bodies die, but their spirits still live). That is why we need to have great respect for the dead people. It doesn’t matter if we know them or not.”
Figure 7. Sureyyah Naledi Moroka, The spirit lives among us, pastel, charcoal, and acrylic paint on Fabriano paper, in Homage to the Departed.
“Artwork made of post-impressionism, cubism, figurative art, and abstraction was inspired by the Beyond the Body exhibition. I believe that the spirit is more than flesh, meaning even when one is deceased, their spirits still roam and live amongst us. The artwork shows both the in-between living and ‘unliving’, depicting death/afterlife using the human skeleton and a lifelike human eye and flesh. The chest is the skeleton anatomy, with the heart on the right, which isn’t the normal human structure. I used shades of grey to show death and other natural colours to represent life. The cubes in the artwork symbolize the existence of life in a dimensional or imaginary world, where a silver lining blurs the boundaries between life and death. The artwork also conveys the importance of respecting the deceased, as they continue to live among us, serving as our guardian angels.”
Figure 8, Andrea Chounyane, Water, charcoal on Fabriano paper, in Homage to the Departed.
“I experimented with my intuition with mark-making, which was intentional yet intuitive. I played with the idea of water as a threshold and conduit for spiritual energy, particularly for the dead, where in many cultures, the dead were buried near bodies of water, as water symbolised the journey of the soul to the afterlife. Vegetation in those areas feeds off of the dead and releases important gasses into the atmosphere that, in a sense, returns the deceased back to a larger, interconnected existence. In some cultures, burial sites near water also symbolise the process of purification, which prepares the soul to move onto a new form of existence or incarnation.”
The collaboration encouraged a meaningful exchange on personhood, ancestor veneration, and the responsibilities toward the dead. For the participating artists, these issues were not abstract but deeply personal, rooted in their own cultural experiences and histories. Reflexivity was central to the process: each artist began with a self-portrait, which acted as a conduit for exploring themes of loss, death, and memory (Fig. 9). These portraits evolved into narratives interwoven with personal and cultural stories, positioning the artists not as distant observers but as active participants in an unfolding dialogue on life and death. In doing so, Homage to the Departed emphasises how ethical questions about human remains are never only matters of law or academic enquiry. They are also matters of cultural memory, identity, and spirituality. Rather, they are matters of affect and care, where emotions, memories, and responsibilities shape what counts as ethical. This aligns with both care ethics and affect theory: care ethics highlights the responsibilities entailed in treating remains with dignity, while affect theory explains how feelings of reverence or unease circulate through such encounters, binding participants in shared vulnerability.
Figure 9. Excellent Katlego, Self portrait, in Homage to the Departed.
“Death is something I would say we all think about, especially when you are young—the fear of death, the unknown of where your spirit goes after death. My portrait is inspired by my mom. She is a church woman and, I would say, a very spiritual figure in my life. I am not spiritual, but I always say, “I know my mom is always praying for me”. She fights physical and spiritual battles. I stand behind her not because I cannot protect myself but because she always has. The uniform she is wearing is a church cloth, representing prayer and the spiritual world. The figure behind her is me, the scared little boy I am inside. With the uncertainty of life where in Kimberley life goes, stab deaths are so many. The person who is coming could be anyone because you never know who is trying to hurt you. It could be a stranger or someone you know. That is the life we live now. Things have changed, and people kill each other over small things that do not even matter. In this dark world, the only light you may have can be your mother. The trees symbolise the jungle that this life is. And in the jungle, anything is possible.”
Kimberley and the McGregor Museum Context
The McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, is a poignant site for such discussions. Skeletal remains that had once been exhibited at the McGregor Museum were removed from display in the late 1980s in recognition of these multiple sensitivities. Traditional healers were invited to the museum in 2004 to perform a cleansing ceremony which included the space where skeletal remains are kept. Some of the remains are identified for repatriation and reburial, including three crania from Australia. It is at the McGregor Museum that the Homage to the Departed project unfolded, building on the Beyond the Body: a portrait of autopsy’ exhibition, and on previous critical efforts like the publication “Skeletons in the Cupboard,” (Legassick, & Rassool, 2000) – co-published by the Museum – which examined the fraught history of acquisition and trade in human remains in the early 20th century. As a custodian today of both colonial and Indigenous histories, the Museum has become a space where ethical, cultural, and historical narratives and perspectives can intersect.
Kimberley is situated in a region once inhabited primarily by Khoe-San people, Batswana farmers to the north east, and later by Griqua and Trekboer frontiersmen. After diamonds were found in the late 1860s, the area attracted diggers from all corners of the world. African migrant labourers were drawn here initially by varied opportunities on the ‘Diamond Fields’ but later came under economic and political coercion as colonial rule was extended northwards. Kimberley became a social and cultural melting pot. The legacy of these histories is visible in the landscape, much like a palimpsest (Bailey 2007) in which fragments of different pasts peek through in the present, from the precolonial rock art sites on the outskirts of the city to the gravestones in Kimberley’s earliest cemeteries. Some of the traces, together with museums and monuments, are assembled in conventional celebratory heritage and tourist offerings, while others provide resources for counter-narratives about Kimberley’s forgotten pasts (Morris 2021). The accidental disturbance of migrant worker pauper graves in Kimberley, in 2003, shedding light on health, and living and working conditions in the mines at the end of the nineteenth century, exemplifies the emergence of hidden histories from within these urban palimpsests (van der Merwe et al 2010).
The mining economy of Kimberley, with imperial interests in full sway by the end of the nineteenth century, set the stage for the broader exploitation and systematic segregationist policies that characterised South Africa’s twentieth century history. It was within this context that the McGregor Museum was established in 1907, itself in turn helping to define the country through natural history, anthropological (including human remains) collections, and historical artefacts. Somewhat transformed today, the Museum’s local legacies, intricately tied to colonial exploitation and its aftermath, became the backdrop for discussing, broadly, the ethics of human remains and heritage preservation in museums.
Together, Beyond the Body and Homage to the Departed extend the ethical conversation from autopsy as a medical practice to the display of human remains as heritage. Both projects use art to mediate between science, spirituality, and society, transforming taboo subjects into spaces of dialogue. Their continuity, now consolidated within the Beyond Physical Form platform, illustrates how interdisciplinary collaboration can generate frameworks for ethical reflection, moving fluidly from the post-mortem table to the museum gallery.
INTERPRETING DEATH THROUGH ART: BEYOND THE BODY AND HOMAGE TO THE DEPARTED
The two projects, Beyond the Body: A Portrait of an Autopsy (2019) and Homage to the Departed (2023), are best understood not as discrete case studies but as interwoven explorations of death and ethical responsibility.
Beyond the Body: A Portrait of Autopsy raised provocative questions on invasiveness, accessibility, and caregiving associated with post-mortem practices. Employing visual metaphors that resonate with wide audiences, Anna Suwalowska’s artworks spark new conversations about death, inspiring diverse ways of thinking about and connecting with it.
Autopsy in Medicine and Science (Fig. 4) a piece with faces of individuals in ruffs shows the progression of the field from the early days of dissection referred to in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt to present-day concerns of scientists. In Portrait of Autopsy (Fig. 1), and Fig. 4, the depiction of bust sculptures may represent the concept of memory, referencing the way portraiture preserves the likeness of an individual. This artistic tradition, rooted in antiquity, suggests the passing of time by immortalising a subject who is no longer alive through their image that lives on.
In Fig. 1, Suwalowska overlaps temporalities by positioning the sculptural bust with an X-ray image as a symbol of modern medical imaging and, below, a severed arm that holds a brain, surrounded by medical instruments. This composition of disconnected body parts can be interpreted as reflecting a separation between the body and mind, where the brain serves as a metaphor for consciousness disconnected from the physical body, evincing a sense of hollowness that the bust and transparency of the X-ray reinforce. The representations of severed body parts in the work invite a reflection on the interconnectedness of the body while also raising questions about how we relate to images of deceased individuals, whose physical presence is palpable but whose mind, represented by the brain, is absent, inaccessible and unknowable to the viewer.
Abstract art uses formlessness and colour to articulate sensorial dimensions of feelings (Haberl 2021, 7). Affect is experienced through feelings that can be described as “shimmers, impulses, sensations, or encounters” (Haberl 2021, 2). Yet these sensations arise from a force that goes beyond emotions, which is felt between bodies that are not defined by “an outer skin-envelope or other surface boundary, but by their potential to reciprocate or co-participate in the passages of affect” (Seigworth and Gregg 2010, 2). In Fig. 2, an abstract grey human form is positioned in the center of the work with a gilded circle surrounded by smaller circles on the figure’s torso or back. The figure floats in a pale blue space surrounded with thin lines, suggestive of metaphorical veins that sustain living bodies. Encircling the figure is a ring of eyes that gradually transitions from open to closed, creating a sense of cyclical movement. This imagery can be interpreted as symbolising the circle of life, from opening our eyes at birth, closing them in death, and opening them once more, albeit perhaps in a different form or space.
The cyclical motifs in Cycle of life (Fig. 2) create a rhythmic sensation that evokes a shimmer of hope for continuity and rebirth. At the lower edge of the composition, Suwalowska depicts two severed feet with vein-like lines emanating from the tops, accompanied by an image of a spine between them. Unlike the grey human figure above them, the feet are more flesh toned and the veins that radiate from them suggest vitality rather than decay. A similar message of life after death is conveyed in Excellent Katlego Squire’s Shadows of the memory (Fig. 5), where the depiction of plants growing near the corpse of an animal symbolises life’s continuity, paralleling the depiction of veins shooting energetically upwards from the feet in the bottom corners of Fig. 2. Drawing on affect theory, both works create a sense of co-participation between the viewer and the image of a deceased body, which is portrayed as existing in a liminal, transitional state between life and death.
The idea of liminality in Fig. 2 is further reinforced by the dark blue colours around the borders of the work, suggesting an ambiguous space where one can float in both the sky and sea, as opposing metaphors for life and death. The liminal position of the dead body in Squire and Suwalowska’s works invites viewers to reflect on the weight of death while maintaining hope in the possibility of life after death, both for themselves and for the subjects portrayed. Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg (2010, 2) define affect as the capacity of bodies to respond based on both sensations and experience, which can include emotions such as despair and grief that results from death. Hope can operate as a point of contact, inviting viewers to imagine that there is the possibility of something beyond death, creating a bond between the viewer and the dead.
Rather than assigning codes of feeling to colours (such as red for anger), affect can be conveyed through abstract uses of colours that remain open rather than fixed (Haberl 2021, 6). For example, in Fig. 4, two central dark coloured human forms are portrayed, the smaller figure leaning in to whisper into the ear of the other. The use of dark grey and black tones associates the figures with themes of death and decay that are typically associated with negative feelings like sadness. However, the colour black can also be understood as the sum of all colours, repositioning the figures in a position of power, whispering secrets and knowledge that those alive are not privy to. Ellie Haberl (2021, 7) argues that overlapping colours also disrupt ideas of linearity or singularity, offering a multidimensional way of experiencing affect. In this way, abstract colours can “transcend the use of language and form” to capture “felt intensities” (Haberl 2021, 6). In Fig 4, the translucent, pastel tones that the black figures are depicted with imply the idea of an ethereal transition or spirituality, where the blending of colours disrupts the binary divide between life and death. The felt intensity the image evokes using colour connects the viewer with the spiritual, metaphysical realm that death occupies, where connections with the dead are felt rather than seen, using colour as a catalyst for relationality.
In monochrome works like Squire’s Shadows of the memory (Fig. 5) and Mogomotsi Makukumare’s Skeletons are Not Objects (Fig. 6) in the Homage to the Departed exhibition, the colour black carries conventional associations with the notions of death and despair, functioning as an emotive power that compels viewers to confront the difficult subject it represents (Hussain 2021, 303). Hussain argues that engaging with colour is a reflective process for artists, helping them navigate challenging emotional states, but this can also extend to viewers, offering a way to contemplate their own relationships with colours and the themes they convey. In Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, the use of monochrome colours highlights an interplay between light and dark that can symbolise life and death. The different shades of black and white in the works create a chiaroscuro effect that adds dimensional depth to the artworks, where the colour black can be interpreted as a driving emotional force.
Far from accentuating any suffering or morbidity, the brightly coloured mixed-media artwork highlights that Beyond the body is not death per se, but life. The use of bright colours to symbolise life is demonstrated in Fig. 3, as well as in Sureyyah Naledi Moroka’s The Spirit Lives Among Us (Fig. 7), creating a warmth that contrasts with the darker, grey tones in the work that represent death. As described by one exhibition reviewer “The use of mixed media creates intricate, textured and – at times – visually disorientating pieces mirroring the plurality and layered complexity of perspectives surrounding autopsy” (Holguin, 2019). For example, Fig. 3 depicts almost fifty hearts, highlighting that in a community (or even a family) many conflicting perspectives may be present, and this could create barriers to reaching a consensus as to how best to respect the dead.
This approach is different from that of artists dwelling on the mysterious inner anatomical workings of the human body. A case in point, during the Baroque period, artistic renditions of the figure of Prometheus from Greek mythology depicted a “twofold fascination for dramatic pathos and scientific interest in anatomy, with suffering bodies as a favoured subject in art” (van Rosmalen et al. 2022, 8). A curiosity with the human body intersects with ongoing ethical considerations about the concept of suffering in relation to dead bodies. While the rational mind recognises that the dead cannot physically feel pain, emotional suffering remains a concern in terms of how the body is treated and represented. Suffering is also an ethical concern when considering the emotional wellbeing of audiences when exposed to images related to challenging topics such as death. Anatomical studies by artists as such, have illustrated a point of intersection between scientific enquiry and artistic creativity.
Colour also creates a sensation of movement and is something we feel connected to through what artist Josef Albers (1963, cited in Manning 2025, 44) calls “colour relatedness”. This means that colour is relationally felt rather than experienced as something separate from the body. For Erin Manning describes colour as operating on a “plane of existence where it is a frequency beyond the visual” (2025, 20). In Fig. 3, Suwalowska portrays several anatomically accurate depictions of human hearts in various shades of red and pink, set against a bright yellow background. In the top right corner, a ring of small multicoloured human figures is depicted, as well as several blue hearts cascading below it to the left that feature human faces. The various patterns on the red and pink hearts convey a sense of individuality and the warm colours can be interpreted as representing living hearts with blood flow. In contrast, the cold-toned blue hearts with ghostly faces represent death where the colour blue implies a lack of circulation. However, the bright yellow background visually connects both sets of hearts. This link is further reinforced by the ring of small, multicoloured human figures that can be read as symbolising relationality, care, and shared human experience of both life and death.
Suwalowska’s Beyond the Body reminds us that to better understand life, we must rethink our relationships with death. The artworks call for ethical relationships with deceased bodies, highlighting how care and compassion can help navigate social and cultural complexities surrounding death.
FROM AUTOPSY TO ANCESTRY: EXHIBITIONS AS ETHICAL DIALOGUE
Since its launch in 2019, Beyond the Body: A Portrait of an Autopsy has travelled internationally across Africa, Europe, and Asia, growing from a pilot collaboration between a social scientist and an artist into an award-winning international travelling exhibition. It has been shown, among other places, at the University of Oxford, the University of Cape Town’s Pathology Learning Centre, the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Denmark, the National University of Singapore, and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium. In recognition of its impact, the exhibition received the WHO Behavioural and Cultural Insights Award.
Its reach has extended far beyond academic spaces, engaging diverse audiences including medical professionals, scientists, artists, and members of the public, many of whom might otherwise avoid confronting the ethical issues surrounding death and autopsies. The exhibition’s success lies in its collaborative, interdisciplinary approach, which has transformed it into a platform for dialogue and reflection on life, death, and ethics. It has also sparked new projects, such as Diagnosing Loss at UCT which combined Anna Suwalowska’s art with objects from across university departments to explore narratives of grief and absence. This fusion of art, medicine, and ethics has opened unexpected collaborations and enriched professional encounters, demonstrating the wider potential of interdisciplinary exchange.
At the UCT’s Pathology Learning Centre, a space usually closed to the public, the exhibition’s ethereal paintings were displayed among preserved organs, creating a striking context for discourse. Pathologists and students engaged in rare conversations about the ethics of autopsy, dignity, and care, reflecting on their work through new cultural and ethical lenses. At the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, the exhibition marked the first post-COVID-19 in-person event and brought about a youth workshop, Bodies in Motion. At this workshop, participants created a Kimberley Mandala to symbolise interconnectedness in life and death.
The project also became central to WHO’s Embodied initiative, which explores how culture shapes health and behaviour. Here, Beyond the Body demonstrated how autopsy is not only a medical procedure but also a cultural practice with profound ethical implications. Now established as part of the broader Beyond Physical Form (2025) platform, the exhibition continues to generate new projects and collaborations, showing how art can transform museums, classrooms, and laboratories into spaces of ethical reflection on life, death, and society.
Beyond the Body deliberately embraces discomfort, a fitting approach given the complex tensions and contradictions surrounding autopsy. Through colour, layered metaphors, and mixed media, Suwalowska crafts a sensitive yet provocative platform for dialogue. Suwalowska’s artworks illustrate how art can serve as a bridge between the unspeakable and the imaginable, where colours, textures, and compositions carry meanings beyond what can easily be articulated.
Audience responses revealed the depth of engagement. Some visitors described the experience as “uneasy—in a good way,” while others reported a surprising sense of calm. Many commented on the richness of the work, noting its “moral and spiritual paradox,” the “layers upon layers” of imagery, and the way new details emerged with each viewing. Viewers highlighted the power of colour and texture, with one remarking: “Every time I thought I had seen everything, I’d notice another detail—amazing!” Others described the exhibition as “thought-provoking,” “moving,” and “stimulating,” praising its ability to make a difficult, taboo subject “so interesting and challenging.”
Feedback also highlighted the ethical and philosophical resonance of the works. One viewer reflected: “If the soul leaves the body but the body is saved, is autopsy ethical? These layered works explore such questions with sensitivity and respect for belief.” Another noted that while death remains frightening, the exhibition offered “the beginnings of acceptance.”
Together, these responses demonstrate that Beyond the Body not only challenged audiences to confront taboos but also created a space where unease, curiosity, and reflection could coexist. The exhibition succeeded in stimulating dialogue that was at once aesthetic, ethical, and deeply personal. This demonstrates how art repositions figures, including dead bodies, as performers, portraying how science and medicine can be visually and artistically rendered. Depicting dead bodies as actors and subjects, rather than mere objects in art, re-enacts a past performance of life as a way of resonating with living audiences (Gapps 2018, 253).
While Beyond the Body opened conversations about autopsy, Homage to the Departed (2022) extended them into the museum, shifting attention from the post-mortem discourse to ancestral remains and cultural memory. Mogomotsi Makukumare (Fig. 6) depicted the journey of a spirit separated from its homeland, reflecting on both cultural narratives of the afterlife and the disruption caused by the collecting and displaying of skeletal remains. Excellent Katlego Squire (Fig. 5) incorporated traditional symbols of protection and guidance for the dead, commenting on the museum’s role in either respecting or violating these practices. Sureyyah Naledi Moroka (Fig. 7) drew direct inspiration from Beyond the Body, reinterpreting its themes within the context of Homage to the Departed. These works positioned artists as ethical agents, asserting cultural frameworks and values that extend beyond Western conceptions of ethics. This approach was essential to decolonising museum practice, shifting the focus from a single ethical narrative to a pluralistic understanding that includes non-Western ontologies and perspectives.
The project was also transformative for the participating artists themselves. Several in their reflection reported that the programme marked a turning point in their artistic development, pushing them to conduct deeper research into human remains, autopsy, and cultural beliefs, and to experiment with new mediums and methods. For some, it increased their confidence as artists and led directly to opportunities such as exhibitions, employment at the McGregor Museum, and further studies in art and design. For others, the report was that the mentorship was crucial in helping them to translate difficult questions into meaningful artistic expressions, while also encouraging collaboration and dialogue across cultural and disciplinary divides. Many emphasised that the project deepened their understanding of the cultural and ethical significance of death, reframing museums not as neutral repositories but as contested spaces where heritage, spirituality, and memory intersect.
As well, the project blurred the boundaries between past and present, creating dialogue between historical objects, contemporary concerns, and spiritual beliefs. Art became a vehicle for ethical critique, a way to visualise and question how museums engage with death, the afterlife, and the respect owed to ancestors. A workshop at the Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre[2], outside Kimberley provided a powerful starting point, connecting contemporary practice with deep cultural histories. Historical artefacts and Stone Age rock art were shown alongside modern interpretations, allowing viewers to reflect on deeper meanings and emotional resonances. Artists also drew inspiration from Alfred Duggan-Cronin’s early 20th-century photographs of rural Southern African communities, reinterpreting these archival images through contemporary practice. This cross-generational dialogue paid homage to Duggan-Cronin’s documentation while bridging past and present, offering perspectives that may resonate with future generations (Fig. 8). The exhibition culminated in an installation that invited audiences to confront their own perceptions of death, spirituality, and ethical responsibility. The artworks ranging from depictions of ritual practices to abstract representations of spiritual connection encouraged nuanced reflection on the ethical dimensions of heritage preservation.
Beyond the Body and Homage to the Departed are not, as mentioned, isolated case studies but interwoven stages in a larger evolving platform, Beyond Physical Form (2025) founded by Anna Suwalowska. Together they demonstrate how art repositions the dead as subjects rather than objects, creating resonance with the living and opening new possibilities for ethical engagement with taboo themes. This resonance is precisely what affect theory helps us to articulate, as it captures the intangible yet powerful ways in which art facilitates felt connections between the living and the dead. At the same time, ethics of care reminds us that such connections come with responsibilities—requiring empathy, attentiveness, and respect toward those who cannot speak for themselves. By linking autopsy to ancestry, and the pathology lab to the museum, these projects illustrate how art can transform even the most difficult terrains of death into spaces for dialogue, empathy, and cultural renewal.
CONSENT, GAZE, AND THE POLITICS OF LOOKING
Art and ethics – The Right to Look, to see Beyond
A key ethical consideration connecting art and medicine is the notion of consent, which directly impacts wellbeing. Beyond the traditional notion of consent, which in this context would refer to whether a deceased person granted permission for their body’s use, there is also the politics of looking associated with consent, which has been of much discussion in relation to photography, especially journalistic photography. In The Right to Look (2011), Nicholas Mirzoeff establishes the concept of ‘the right to look’ as a methodological framework through which to see historical power structures, whereby power is reinforced through classification, separation, and aesthetics. As Divya Srinivasan (2024) argues, there is a traditional artistic motif of the reclining nude and its association with a supine corpse that relates to the notion of vulnerability. This raises concerns about the voyeurism involved in gazing at a dead body and whether the viewer has a right to look, stemming from a position of power that comes from being alive. But does the corpse look back at us?
Jacqueline Millner describes the notion of care as a collaboration between participants that shifts perspectives from the “privilege of autonomy and independence towards an interrelatedness and collective vulnerability” (2024, 103). In Fig. 3, the interplay of colour and form conveys interconnectivity between the living and deceased, as discussed above. Ideas about a collective vulnerability emerge in the work from the depiction of red and blue floating hearts that are both presented as exposed and unprotected organs detached from bodies. Care ethics seeks non-exploitative and equitable ways to give and receive care (Robinson 2014, as cited in Millner 2024, 104). Recognising that both living and deceased beings, which the hearts symbolise, coexist in the same space emphasises that both deserve care. This perspective disrupts power dynamics in which the powerful/living assume privileges over those with lesser power/deceased (Millner 2024, 104). Conventionally, the heart is understood as a metaphor for love, yet Anna Suwalowska’s anatomical precision grounds the work. In this sense, the metaphorical association of the heart with the concept of love is also linked with ideas of responsibility, care, and empathy towards others. Drawing on perspectives from care ethics, this interpretation highlights how humans are embedded in networks and relationships of care that require moral responsibility (Millner 2024).
Reframing Dead Bodies Through Art
The artists in Homage to the Departed did not use human remains in their art; they only engaged with artefacts in the displays and storerooms that resonated with the topic of this research, relative to the wider context of dead bodies in art and heritage spaces. In this the project was unlike that of the the controversial Cadaver School of artists, discussed in Madeline Eschenburg’s article, “The Corpse and Humanist Discourse” (2023). The Cadaver School emerged in the 1990s as part of a movement in contemporary Chinese art that used actual human corpses as materials for art installations. Qiu Zhijie and Wu Meichun’s 1999 exhibition Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion marked the debut of the movement, featuring art installations that incorporated both human and animal remains. Eschenburg (2023, 1) notes that bodies were borrowed through friends of the artists who worked in morgues, with the expectation that the corpses would be returned. This highlights the level of care and responsibility artists were expected to uphold when borrowing the bodies. Although the government condemned the display of dead human bodies as inappropriate and potentially harmful to social decency, its censorship overlooked the emotional nuances of the artworks that could potentially lead to social wellbeing where the body served as an artistic outlet and catalyst for audiences to engage with the taboo subject of death. Eschenburg (2023, 2) emphasises that the Cadaver School artists did not use the human body merely for shock value in a disrespectful manner, but rather as an impactful medium for artistic experimentation to reveal a profound relationship between art and society.
Exhibitions like the Body Worlds and Real Bodies use human remains as narratives in cultural institutions, intertwining art, education and science. While Body Worlds thematically focuses on anatomical education, Real Bodies presents anatomy as spectacle, exploring human experiences more broadly through cultural and artistic interpretations. Whereas ethical and legal guidelines are more strictly enforced today within scientific contexts, they are less clear in the entertainment sector, where Real Bodies aligns, raising questions about how “entertainment” is defined (Mao 2018). Real Bodies organises bodies into themed gallery rooms, such as Move, Love, What Becomes of Us, and Repair, with the purpose of demonstrating how the body functions in relation to these generalised aspects of the human experience. This approach requires a curatorial element that creatively interprets and displays bodies reenacting lived functions, knowledge that is gained through autopsies and medical knowledge. Importantly, presenting dead bodies in a gallery setting allows for creative meaning-making, whereas morgues with their sombre ambiance and their scientific-pathological connotations can mute a deeper connection to the body, reducing it to a specimen under scientific investigation.
Cultural institutions like The British Museum have supported the use of human remains in a display or gallery setting, stating that it “can add to our understanding of that individual” (Fletcher, Anotoine and Hill 2014, 7). While the British Museum stresses the importance of the duty of care when displaying human remains, the answers to questions as to who should care, how, and why, remain vague. Being in caring relationships is at the core of human existence and consciousness, and therefore unavoidable (Sander-Staudt 2006). Additionally, ethicist Michael Slote (2007, 28) argues that we have a moral responsibility to care about and feel empathy for strangers, like a deceased human whom we may not have known in life and is even further distanced as an unknowable deceased body representing only an image of a human being that we think we know.
In Homage to the Departed, the idea of caring about individuals we may not know is emphasised in Makukumare’s Skeletons are Not Objects (Fig. 6). In this work, Makukumare humanises the image of the skull rather than reducing it to an objectified artefact, suggesting that it remains connected to the spirit of the person it belonged to, who deserves respect and care even after death.
Exhibitions like Real Bodies and Body Worlds claim ethical transparency since body donors supposedly consented to the educational use of their bodies in these exhibitions, although it is unclear whether these donors were aware of the particularities around how their bodies would be posed and displayed. Both Body Worlds and Real Bodies have faced serious controversies over the sourcing of the bodies in question. In 2018, concerns were also raised that some individuals in the Real Bodies exhibition in Sydney were of unclaimed corpses, possibly executed Chinese prisoners, and where no consent forms could be provided (Pacitti, 2018). Two decades earlier, in 2004, Body Worlds creator Dr. Gunther von Hagens, inventor of the plastination technique, returned seven corpses to China amid similar allegations, and additional claims were made that some corpses had been from mentally ill and homeless people in Russia (Pacitti, 2018; Tufts, 2003).
Like the Cadaver School artists, who aimed to utilise the real human cadavers to reveal the relationship between art and society, these exhibitions can also be seen to use the body as an aesthetic catalyst to explore the relationship between self and society, prompting reflexive thinking on the part of the viewer. For instance, instead of perceiving the dead body in the What Becomes of Us gallery room in Real Bodies as an object of curiosity, spectators are enabled to imagine what it might feel like to be dead; as such, the display of the human body opens this avenue of reflection. There is also the converse view that this imaginative engagement can also evoke feelings of anxiety and fear about the unknown, which the dead body represents. Establishing an ethical relationship with the dead body can help navigate these feelings by restoring a sense of connection.
CONCLUSION
Art can transcend conventional communication, merging imagination with critical enquiry. Homage to the Departed and Beyond the body leveraged this potential by presenting artworks that served as bridges between cultural contexts, enabling conversations on ethics, heritage, and respect for the dead.
These dialogues encourage a shift from viewing human remains and artefacts as mere objects or museum specimens to recognising them as sacred entities, as individuals needing to be re-humanised – and recognising that some cultural artefacts, in a different ontological register, would be understood as ‘other-than-human persons’ – themselves deserving of the same respect and ethical consideration (Morris, 2020).
Ultimately, Beyond the Body and Homage to the Departed illustrate how art can serve as a catalyst for rethinking the narratives presented in museums, and encouraging ethical reflection and cultural dialogue. By integrating diverse artistic, scientific, and cultural perspectives, this project invites a reimagining of museum spaces—not as static repositories of history but as dynamic platforms for the kinds of considerations and discourses on ethics outlined in this article. Critique rooted in care theory offers a tool for addressing issues and sensitivities concerning human remains, autopsy, health and mortality, and their representation in art and museums. By rethinking the stories they tell, museums can better position themselves as vital participants in ongoing dialogues about our varied pasts and shared future, and ensuring their present relevance as they help to shape meaning in an increasingly interconnected world.
This work was supported by Wellcome Trust grant numbers 221719, 225238 and Brocher Foundation. We wish to thank the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, under CEO Ms Sunet Swanepoel, who provided support and a spacious studio for the duration of the project, and hosted both the Beyond the Body (2019) and Homage to the Departed (2023) exhibitions.
We would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive feedback.
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Notes
[1] All artwork is available to see: https://www.oxjhubioethics.org/research/homage-to-the-departed/Home
[2] This site, a satellite of the McGregor Museum developed as a rock art tourism centre in 2000, features rock engravings created by the hunter-gatherer ancestors of the San people. These engravings, some thousands of years old, are understood to have been part of ritual performances connected to healing dances and altered states of consciousness.
Halina Suwalowska is a Researcher in Global Health Bioethics at the Ethox Centre, part of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford. She works with the Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative (GLIDE) focusing on ethical and social issues related to managing dead bodies in global health, and the challenges faced by frontline staff and ‘last responders’ in these contexts. Halina is also pursuing novel art-based methods to explore complex ethical questions in global health. In collaboration with Anna Suwalowska, she has developed a public engagement programme, producing Beyond. The body: a Portait of Autopsy, The Nobodies (2024) and Homage to the Departed (2023), exploring the ethics of human remains and challenging societal taboos surrounding death. She completed a DPhil in Population Health at the Ethox Centre in 2021 on the ethics and politics of implementing Minimally Invasive Autopsy in low-income settings. Previously, Halina worked at the Wellcome Trust in London and completed a secondment at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Vietnam and Nepal.
David Morris (PhD), born and bred in Kimberley, studied at the University of Cape Town and with post-graduate degrees from the University of the Western Cape, is an Honorary Research Associate at Kimberley’s McGregor Museum (formerly Head of Archaeology), and is affiliated with the Heritage Department at Sol Plaatje University.His principal research interest is in rock art of the Northern Cape and Karoo, while he has helped develop public archaeology through the Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre, Wonderwerk Cave and other museum contexts such as the Ancestors Gallery at the McGregor Museum. His publications include research articles and co-authored books on rock art, indigenous perspectives, and the history of archaeological research. He is a member of the South African national Advisory Committee on Repatriation of Human Remains and Heritage Objects.
Anna Suwalowska, a London-based Polish artist, holds an M.A. degree from the Royal College of Art in London (2013) and a B.A. from the UAL, Camberwell College of Arts (2011). Additionally, she holds a diploma in dental technology from Wroclaw, Poland, in 2003.Anna’s artistic journey includes international exhibitions and residency awards in Taiwan, Norway, and Hong Kong. Most recently, she served as the Artistic Director of a collaborative project at the McGregor Museum (2023) in Kimberley, South Africa. This project, “Homage to the Departed,” was conducted in collaboration with local artists, a social scientist, and an archaeologist, exploring the ethics of displaying human remains in museum spaces. It culminated in an art exhibition at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore, US (2024), and the Duggan-Cronin Gallery at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley (2024). Prior to this, Anna collaborated with researchers and practitioners from prestigious academic institutions, including the University of Oxford, the University of Exeter, and the University of Cape Town. A significant achievement of these partnerships was her solo exhibition “Beyond the Body: A Portrait of Autopsy” (2020-2023), which challenges societal taboos surrounding death. This exhibition was showcased in esteemed medical institutions across Europe, the UK, and South Africa. It was selected by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organization, to illustrate how behavioural and cultural factors contribute to improving health outcomes for individuals, communities, and the planet. In 2024, Anna was invited to exhibit as part of the lecture series “Death Care” at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, with her exhibition “Nobodies,” which explores the ethics of caring for unidentified bodies.
Luba Kozak is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Media, Arts, and Performance at the University of Regina, co-supervised by Dr. Taiwo Afolabi and Dr. Karla McManus. Her doctoral project explores exotic pet animals in eighteenth-century British portraiture. Luba is an art historian, art-based researcher, and animal liberation activist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, double major in Art History and English, and a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, both from the University of Regina (Canada). Additionally, Luba holds a Professional Writing certificate, specialising in Public Relations and Marketing, from the University of Calgary (Canada) and is also a UNESCO Janusz Korczak Chair Research Fellow (2023). Luba’s interdisciplinary research interests revolve around eighteenth-century British visual and material culture; European philosophy; ethics; and animal studies/vegan theory. She has several international book and journal publications and serves as a copy-editor for Sloth journal. Luba has also served as a language editor for Open Cultural Studies, published by De Gruyter, and has worked as an international art consultant for the International Organization for Migration (a division of the United Nations).