Absolving Life (Don't Die With All Your Sins)

Wooden box, mini compact disc, chewing gum wrapped in wax paper, salt in plastic container, instruction leaflet, 2009 (edition of 5)

This piece takes its inspiration from the funeral custom of sin-eating, a Seventeenth Century ritual in which a designated person (the sin-eater) would absorb the sins of a dead person by consuming food on or near the corpse, allowing the deceased’s soul to rest peacefully. With this piece, I have re-invented the ritual to allow sins to be removed from a dead or dying person’s soul without being deposited into another soul, thus allowing peaceful death and the alleviation of burden.