Artist Tremaine Emory presented an installation of his piece A Proper Burial Finally, Thanks America! alongside a conversation with Artist Theaster Gates and Director Elvira Dyangani Ose
"America’s never had a wake or a funeral," Emory says, "For all the slaves that built the country over time, all the servants after slavery ended, everyone that was lynched or shot by a cop, all the atrocities that have happened to Africans that were taken from Africa and brought to America... A lot of cultures do wakes, particularly in the culture I grew up in, [which is] Baptist Christian. The last wake I went to was my mother’s wake and I thought it was the most horrible idea, [being] in the presence of something you love no longer being here. As painful as it was, when I think back it’s a beginning to moving past that pain. That’s how this idea started, thinking of my mum so much, and where it started. It started with the wake.”
