Breathing life into an old burial ground
Stepping into the musty, pitch-black belly of a mausoleum in Providence’s North Burial Ground, beyond several coffin-sized compartments, I find my teeth on edge. I’d be afraid to go in alone, but luckily, I have friends along to fortify my nerve. Lucky, too, that “Cryptic Providence: More Than a Graveyard,” a project spearheaded by artist and ringmaster Jay Critchley, provides flashlights at the mausoleum’s entrance, so I’m not completely in the dark.
There’s art inside the crypt. “Cryptic Providence” features installations throughout this 110-acre public cemetery (there were also staged performances in June and another is planned for Sept. 27, the day before the show closes). Critchley’s own piece, “Final Passage,” sits in the mausoleum’s entrance. It’s a vintage Chevy mummified in bandages woven artfully across the hood. He has suspended a handful of Little Trees air fresheners above the car (I guess if there’s anywhere you’d need an air freshener, it would be a mausoleum). It’s a bold work, slyly tying oil consumption to mortality, and it trumpets Critchley’s camp aesthetic.
Walk past “Final Passage” into the deserted crypt and into the blackness, down a hallway, and you’ll reach Joseph Burwell’s “The Purity of the Vikings.” The installation recalls an archeological dig: a hole, carefully excavated, cordoned off by red-tipped sticks. Critchley has said there are supposed to be objects here, faux artifacts to make this dig complete, but all we spy with our flashlights are a large can of Heineken and a tiny vodka bottle, perching on the edge of the hole.
“Is that part of the art?” asks my friend.
“I don’t think so,” I say, although with art, you never can tell. Critchley later confirms that no, the alcohol doesn’t belong in the installation, despite the reputation Vikings had for hard living.
Without artifacts, though, “The Purity of the Vikings” is simply a hole. Degradation, thievery, and vandalism are a problem for “Cryptic Providence,” which has suffered since its June opening. Rebecca Siemering’s installation in the cemetery’s potter’s field, where most of the low graves are merely numbered, and those buried there no longer remembered by name, was temporarily gone last week, due to vandals. It features bell like objects floating on wires over each anonymous grave a lovely notion for remembering the forgotten and chiding the living.
Critchley has a history of salvaging decrepit sites and making art out of them; last summer, he covered a shuttered old Wellfleet hotel in sand and invited artists to exhibit within its weathered walls. The North Burial Ground fits his MO. It opened in 1700, and lacks the manicured feeling of a Victorian-era graveyard such as Forest Hills Cemetery, which has also mounted occasional thematic art projects over the years, or Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Tags: air fresheners, bandages, blackness, bold work, burwell, flashlights, heineken, jay critchley, little trees, mausoleum, north burial ground, oil consumption, public cemetery, ringmaster, sept 27, thievery, vikings, vintage chevy, vodka bottle