Memento Mori comprised of Karen Finley’s The Women’s Room (1992) and The Memorial Room (1992), two tableaux vivant incorporating text, objects, live participants, and paintings. Alongside the exhibition, Finley staged performances of her work-in-progress, A Certain Level of Denial (1994).
A performance artist whose use of nudity and profanity was debated in the Supreme Court (National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998)), Finley creates activist installations and scenarios that spotlight contemporary political issues. The Women’s Room included dressing tables with statements scrawled across the mirrors, a woman in a nightgown lying on a mattress, a bird in a cage, a waterfall of coat hangers, and painted text telling stories of self-inflicted abortions. The Memorial Room featured a row of four beds, two with patients and friends by their sides, two empty, with memorial offerings atop them. At the room’s entrances, attendants offered visitors flowers to tie on a wrought-iron gate in memory of people who had passed away from AIDS. Over three hundred and fifty people volunteered as performers.
Memento Mori was organized by Julie Lazar,The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.