© JAE RHIM LEE
Artist Jae Rhim Lee thinks we’re going about death all wrong. We dress up our deceased loved ones in their favorite outfits (or ours), embalm them with chemicals like formaldehyde (which the US Department of Health and Human Services recently upgraded from a probable carcinogen to a known carcinogen), and put them in a box (with a grave liner) before putting them in the ground. All of these things aim “to preserve the body and protect it from the environment, with the idea that decomposition is something to be avoided,” Lee says. “And it’s a losing battle. Funeral directors will claim that the body will be preserved, and of course it’s not true.”
Lee says she suspects that modern, Western burial ritual is really just ...
