Pat McNally: Rachelle, your work certainly has a wonderful sensuality to it, along with some very clear references to mortality, and although there is a playfulness to your work, I do not sense an irony or distancing yourself from the genre itself. Instead, you seem to be honestly engaging with this theme, rather than making a statement about it. While your work gives the viewer a lot of food for thought, absent are the simplistic moral preaching and guilty pleasure elements that were often a part of Vanitas pieces in the past. What drew you to explore this form?
PM: The skull has become such a common image in our society, that either everything has become a memento mori, or perhaps through overexposure, it has lost its power to bring our thoughts to our own mortality. Your work makes use of the human skull, but in a very subtle way. This is certainly a departure from the genre tradition. Could you share your thoughts on the ever-presence of the skull in our culture, and how you chose to use it?
Rachelle Soucy: The entire series originated through playfulness and discovery. It was a playful experiment that led me to explore themes of Memento Mori and Vanitas – I started by arranging still-lifes on top of my scanner. I was quickly inspired by the shallow depth of field created by the scanner – it shows incredible detail that quickly drops into beautiful shadows. This aesthetic is uncanny in its resemblance to 16th and17th Dutch paintings of Memento Mori. Coincidentally, I was arranging all these symbolic items, flowers, fruits, shells, and hourglasses, which are typically present in these types of paintings to symbolize life’s fleeting moments, futility of pleasure and ultimately reminders of one’s mortality. For my first series, I decided to place myself amongst these items. So you are correct, I am not making a statement about this theme, more so I am engaging directly as subject matter – just as the flowers are decaying, so too am I. In general, decay is an unusual subject matter that I was intrigued by. I wanted to explore this genre personally by capturing myself in a fleeting moment and to remind myself of the shortcomings of vanity.
PM: The skull has become such a common image in our society, that either everything has become a memento mori, or perhaps through overexposure, it has lost its power to bring our thoughts to our own mortality. Your work makes use of the human skull, but in a very subtle way. This is certainly a departure from the genre tradition. Could you share your thoughts on the ever-presence of the skull in our culture, and how you chose to use it?
RS: I chose not to use a single skull in my work, which perhaps has a negative connotation or has been over popularized in our culture. Instead, I strung these carved skull beads into prayer beads, showing the skull in repetition - symbolizing prayer and meditation. I choose to use the skull as a quiet reminder of mortality and not as a logo of death.
PM: Your sensual use of hair in these pieces ties them together, and creates a kind of oceanic depth and surreal texture to the work. I don’t think I’ll see hair in the same way again, which is something that art at its best, really can do; help us to see things in a new way. Has your work and thought in this project changed the way you see death?
RS: This is such a compliment, thank you! It is the hair the ties both series together. Piecing different scans together was easiest by matching the hair in different scans … and it is this which connects all of the works. By piecing multiple scans together, I could create the illusion of long flowing hair, a type of hyper-portrait. So these portraits aren’t completely representational, there are still illusions at work in these portraits connected to vanity.
