Pulvis et Umbra: Visual Reflections on Death and Ist Rituals

Abstract

The article examines two works from the Pulvis et Umbra series (2015-2023) created by Rodrigo Bruna in the cities of Temuco and Santiago, Chile. The works are constructed from visual and auditory records linked to the funerary ritual. The research analyzes how contemporary artistic practice produces situated knowledge about death as a fact and dying as a process within a specific cultural context. Unlike anthropological or historical approaches, the study is situated within artistic practice as research. This perspective interrogates its epistemological conditions through its material and medial dimensions, that is, how supports, techniques, and media generate meaning. To this end, it combines a review of philosophical conceptions of death with a historical analysis of the funerary ritual in the West, delineating the conceptual framework of the work. Methodologically, the notion of material thinking (Bolt, 2010) is adopted as an analytical tool. Formal and technical decisions are thus examined, showing how the works resignify documentary archives associated with the funerary. The results indicate that these operations transform the visibility of the archive and modulate the temporal and affective experience of mourning. In this way, the works expand the discourses of contemporary art and make the dying present in the public sphere. This demonstrates how artistic production generates critical knowledge about the visual culture of death.