Viewing Grief and Longing

Today I went to the St. Louis Art Museum for the free tickets they offer on Fridays to their visiting exhibits, which is currently The Mourners. The pieces are on loan from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and were originally used in the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1404-1419).

But here's the interesting piece - along with the tomb pieces, most of which are about eighteen inches high, they are showing a five-minute long film by California artist Bill Viola. The 2008 piece is entitled Visitation and is described by the SLAM website as a "meditation on the presence of the dead in everyday life". The piece is explained as showing two women breaking through the barrier between the 'spiritual' world into the 'physical' world. On one side of the barrier, they are gray, ghostly. As they break through the barrier of water, they are suddenly colorful, clearly seen. We see their reactions, one of the women seems overjoyed to have returned and lovingly gazes upon the viewer. She is dressed in a burgundy-colored shirt with red hair pulled up in a bun. The other woman seems lost and scared, her short gray hair and monochrome outfit perhaps reflecting her emotional state.

There is the outline of an eye that is overlaid on this film, as if it is the viewer themselves that the women are coming to visit. The gray woman seems to be acting as a guide to the colorful woman through the barrier - the first to come, the first to leave. Her reaction makes me think she is almost unwilling to have come in the first place, and she is as eager to get them away. The colorful woman holds the viewers gaze until she is through the barrier. And then they walk away, disappearing into the gray fuzz of the screen.

I overheard one of the other women who viewed this piece suggesting that the water barrier was in fact tears of grief. I wonder about the role of longing in the piece - who is it that is wishing, perhaps even willing, to see these women manifested? The grief and longing reminds me that death is in fact not natural. But I question that we will want to 'return' to view loved one or to engage with them when we are in the presence of the Lord, or that we would even be able to do so. I do believe that what is now spiritual (or as the Apostle says, in the presence of the Lord) will one day be physical again.

This short film leaves a lot to ponder.