Memento Mori: Time, Clarity and the Pursuit of Purpose

April 3, 2025 – April 26, 2025

Opening Reception Thurs. April 3, 6 – 8pm

Overview

As we turn the corner on the somnambulance of winter, and the awakening of spring glimpses closer, the concept of “Memento Mori” comes into high relief.   Though its direct Latin translation, “remember that you will die”, implies a moribund focus on the inevitability of death, “Memento mori” concurrently insists on an examination of the fleeting condition that precedes said end: an invigorated and courageous life. 

A favored and perennial tableau theme, “Memento Mori” motifs include skulls, hourglasses, and sputtering candles flickering a last light over fruits and flowers.  Color field painting similarly traffics in existential contemplation.  Both pronounce a tick-tick boom urgency to finding a purposeful and grateful existence and the extravagant waste of a life spent in the vain consumption of fleeting earthly pleasures.  

Lastly, if time is a fleeting gift, and death inevitable, NYAE asks “are you truly living?” and invites its artist members and allies to submit works that inspire us to continuing treading the road of life doing what we know to be the right thing.

Participating Artists: Viktoriya Basina, Melanie D. Berardicelli, Amelia Biewald, Alexandra Rutsch Brock, Sunny Chapman, Charles Campo, Sue Collier, Peter Hristoff, Kathleen Jansyn, Muriel Kalish, Tine Kindermann, Anki King, Dyann Klein, Marco Miller, Connie Newton Stancell, Julia Roshkow, Arlene Rush, Carri Skoczek, Natalie Steigmann-Gall, George Towne, Alex Z. Wang, Brenda Zlamany