These set of three Memento Mori etchings were born of the Danse Macabre chapbook I am still working on. This last (pictured first, below) was based on a photograph I took in a room of the Gran Canaria National museum. The four walls of the room were lined with glass door cabinets on whose shelves rested the remains of the island's indigenous population. They were of Beri-ber origin, the indigenous population of southern Morocco & the Sudan. They made their way to the then uninhabited island of Gran Canaria, as well as other islands of the Archipelago, at the time of Augustus.
They went on to live in complete isolation & evolved distinct cultures on each island over a period of more than 1500 years. It was in the 15th century that Spanish Christians arrived & wiped them out en masse within a few years. Some of the skulls, including small ones that belonged to children, & even smaller, toothless ones, that belonged to infants, show damage from the blunt instrument that killed them. Now, all that is left of the Guanche culture are these skulls, broken clay pots (I am working on a clay pot of my own based in shape on their designs, & in decoration, on their slaughter) & the intriguing stone layouts of their underground, communal dwellings.
Death on the Bus
Death & the Multitude
