A catharsis - the MEMENTO MORI collection

Christine van Aardt
Mar 15, 2025
2 min read

"Create from the places that ache. From the questions that don't leave you alone. From the wounds that can't fully heal - not to fix them, but to feel them at last, To let them speak."

𝐑𝐚𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫*

More than a year ago, my mother-in-law died from cancer.

She was a mom to me since I was seventeen.

It was a long, difficult, ugly, heartbreaking, frustrating, and incredibly sad journey.

For her. For us.

Cancer seems to be everywhere. And I know so many will relate to this.

The journey we were on,

And now, the loss and grief we are stuck in.

I could write about this for hours.

But, in an unintentional but really obvious way, this whole experience inspired a collection I worked on the last few months of twenty-twenty-four.

This is a Limited Edition Collection; The MEMENTO MORI series.

Latin - meaning, “Remember, you must die”.

In art, it emerged as a genre of painting during the 16th century, depicting still life oil paintings of objects of beauty and decay as a reminder of the fragility of life, urging the viewer to contemplate their own morality, often, all in order to make every detail of daily life miraculous.

Creating this series has been a catharsis for me.

It's something I've written about and planned in my journal years ago.

It's a series I was so excited to just get out.

Out of my head,

out of my heart,

out into a physical form.

It felt like a release.

Each illustration, each print, each arrangement, is imbued

with so much grief, gratefulness, and has literally become an imprint

of my own emotional state.

For this series, I used simple objects.

Objects that are beautiful - but that beauty decays.