Icons in Ash

The art of the human image arose many millennia ago precisely for the purpose of keeping the dead among us—and not just in memory but in charged ceremonial objects. The artist Heide Hatry has developed a process in which she creates realistic portraits made out of the remains of a beloved one. The portraits remind one of Buddhist sand paintings, and through this portraiture the bereaved experience calm and tranquility through. In Icons in Ash twenty-seven writers investigate this phenomena and write beautiful and enlightening meditations on death, the dead body, art, transformation, relics, psychology, philosophy, religion, mourning, evolution, and immortality. Contributors, among others, include: Hans Belting, Mark Dery, Eleanor Heartney, Siri Hustvedt, Jonas Mekas, Rick Moody, Mark Pachter, Steven Pinker, Wolf Singer, Luisa Valenzuela, and Peter Weibel.

Heide Hatry Heide Hatry, New York-based German artist, is often described as a neo-conceptualist. Her work transcends, transgresses, or transforms the normal relationship of the artist to both audience and work. Among her fundamental preoccupations are identity, gender roles, the nature of aesthetic experience and the meaning of beauty, the human exploitation of the natural world, and the effects of knowledge upon perception.