Every Ocean Hughes, One Big Bag, 2021 (still). Video with sound; 40 min. Courtesy the artist
List Projects 33: Every Ocean Hughes
-
Explore all artists who have exhibited at the List in our Artist Index.
“If it is ever possible to diminish fear, it is beautiful to witness.”
So says the death doula in Every Ocean Hughes’s recent video installation, One Big Bag (2021). The work—alongside the performances Help the Dead (2019) and River (2023)—is part of a trilogy that considers the intimate process of dying. In One Big Bag, Hughes stages a monologue by a millennial death doula (performed by Lindsay Rico with choreography by Miguel Gutierrez). Surrounded by the objects of her mobile “corpse kit,” the doula assuredly explains her tools: tampons for absorbing fluid, scissors for cutting cloth, bowls for washing, ceremonial bells. In her address, the practical matters of dealing with a corpse (and an estate) are balanced with an unencumbered spirit of care for the dead and those around them. Refusing the fictions of euphemism or recourse to nuclear family, One Big Bag insists on alternative forms of kinship and communion made in and around death when it is confronted as a brute and beautiful fact. As the performer in the film says, “Death has to be understood with the senses. The mind doesn’t get it.”
List Projects 33: Every Ocean Hughes is organized by Natalie Bell, Chief Curator, and Zach Ngin, Curatorial Assistant.
Every Ocean Hughes (b. 1977, lives and works in Stockholm and New York) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2023); Studio Voltaire, London (2022); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2022); Secession, Vienna (2015); and PARTICIPANT INC., New York (2015). Collaboration has been a central part of her practice: She was editor and cofounder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR, has written lyrics for several bands (The Knife, Colin Self, JD Samson & MEN), and has done costume design. Hughes’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Kadist, Paris/San Francisco, among others. For over ten years, Hughes has taught art in Europe and the US and works as a coach for artists and creative producers as West Street Coaching.
Sponsors
Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Audrey & James Foster and Cynthia & John Reed.
General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Vice Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council; and many generous individual donors. The Advisory Board Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.