Grief, Identity and the Arts addresses the interplay between grief and identity in a broad range of artistic disciplines, historical periods, and geographical areas.

A timely and urgent exploration into the ways artists have grappled with race and grief in modern America, conceived by the great curator Okwui Enwezor Featuring works by more than 30 artists and writings by leading scholars and art historians, this book - and its accompanying exhibition, both conceived by the late, legendary curator Okwui Enwezor - gives voice to artists addressing concepts of mourning, commemoration, and loss and considers their engagement with the social movements, from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, that black grief has galvanized. Artists included: Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Beasley, Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Charles Gaines, Theaster Gates, Ellen Gallagher, Arthur Jafa, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Okwui Okpokwasili, Adam Pendleton, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindell, Cameron Rowland, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Diamond Stingily, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jack Whitten. Essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Naomi Beckwith, Judith Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Massimiliano Gioni, Saidiya Hartman, Juliet Hooker, Glenn Ligon, Mark Nash, Claudia Rankine, and Christina Sharpe.

Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity is a landmark contribution that provides fresh insights into the experience and process of mourning. It includes fourteen original essays by pre-eminent psychoanalysts, historians, classicists, theologians, architects, art-historians and artists, that take on the subject of normal, rather than pathological mourning. In particular, it considers the diversity of the mourning process; the bereavement of ordinary vs. extraordinary loss; the contribution of mourning to personal and creative growth; and individual, social, and cultural means of transcending grief. The book is divided into three parts, each including two to four essays followed by one or two critical discussions. Co-editor Adele Tutter’s Prologue outlines the salient themes and tensions that emerge from the volume. Part I juxtaposes the consideration of grief in antiquity with an examination of the contemporary use of memorials to facilitate communal remembrance. Part II offers intimate first-person accounts of mourning from four renowned psychoanalysts that challenge long-held psychoanalytic formulations of mourning. Part III contains deeply personal essays that explore the use of sculpture, photography, and music to withstand, mourn, and transcend loss on individual, cultural and political levels. Drawing on the humanistic wisdom that underlies psychoanalytic thought, co-editor Léon Wurmser’s Epilogue closes the volume. Grief and its Transcendence will be a must for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and scholars within other disciplines who are interested in the topics of grief, bereavement and creativity.

Artful Grief is a decade long study of loss by an art therapist, in the aftermath of her daughters suicide. On October 11, 2001, Sharon received a phone call in the middle of the night from the New York City Police Department telling her that her seventeen year old daughter Kristin, had fallen from the roof of her college dormitory. So began her journey into the labyrinth of unspeakable grief. As the ?rst year drew to a close she found no comfort in traditional therapy, and no solace in spoken or written words. In surrender to her inner art therapists guidance, she began to create collages. She cut and tore images out of magazines and glued them on various size paper. The paper was a safe and sacred container, receptive to the fullness of emotion, story and paradox. Over time there was transformation and healing. Artful Grief A creative roadmap through violent dying and grief. A dose of soul medicine for survivors. A way to retrieve the pieces of a shattered life, with paper, scissors and glue. A resourceful tool for those suffering with complicated grief and/or PTSD. A place for the unspeakable to be seen and heard. A process to quiet the mind and open the heart. A visual experience of trauma images as illustrations of hope. A sample of prophetic dreams and meditations that are illuminating. A heartfelt sharing of intimate secrets for understanding and compassion. A surprising grief gift that is inspiring.

Epipremnum aureum, devil's ivy, or (somewhat erroneously) pothos is not special. It is not symbolically useful, it is not rare, it is not hard to grow or care for. But in the aftermath of unexpected death, an impossible-to-kill houseplant might have something to say about keeping going. In Pothos, Campbell traces a polyvocal narrative of loss, absent presence, and queer homemaking through a poetics of attention and an engagement with texts, art, music, and the occasional hologram. Hovering somewhere between memoir, prose poetry and essay, Pothos examines the condition of being alternately infuriated, bored, and overwhelmed by grief - its mutability, its opacity, its refusals. It is a raw and nebulous exploration of mourning, care and domesticity, and the way in which the small background sentience of plants can (maybe) tell us something about our own growth.

The use of the arts in psychotherapy is a burgeoning area of interest, particularly in the field of bereavement, where it is a staple intervention in hospice programs, children’s grief camps, specialized programs for trauma or combat exposure, work with bereaved parents, widowed elders or suicide survivors, and in many other contexts. But how should clinicians differentiate between the many different approaches and techniques, and what criteria should they use to decide which technique to use—and when? Grief and the Expressive Arts provides the answers using a crisp, coherent structure that creates a conceptual and relational scaffold for an artistically inclined grief therapy. Each of the book’s brief chapters is accessible and clearly focused, conveying concrete methods and anchoring them in brief case studies, across a range of approaches featuring music, creative writing, visual arts, dance and movement, theatre and performance and multi-modal practices. Any clinician—expressive arts therapist, grief counselor, or something in between—looking for a professionally oriented but scientifically informed book for guidance and inspiration need look no further than Grief and the Expressive Arts.

Death affects all aspects of life, it touches our emotions and influences our identity. Presenting a kaleidoscope of informative views of death, dying and human response, this book reveals how different disciplines contribute to understanding the theme of death. Drawing together new and established scholars, this is the first book among the studies of emotion that focuses on issues surrounding death, and the first among death studies which focuses on the issue of emotion. Themes explored include: themes of grief in the ties that bind the living and the dead, funerals, public memorials and the art of consolation, obituaries and issues of war and death-row, use of the internet in dying and grieving, what people do with cremated remains, new rituals of spiritual care in medical contexts, themes bounded and expressed through music, and more.