Megan Hanley
Region: Pacific Coast
In the summer of 2016, I received a Mary Ausplund Tooze Scholar
Travel Award to participate in a three-week dig with the Sanisera
Archaeology Institute in Menorca, Spain. While unearthing a
necropolis of approximately 1,500-year-old Roman tombs, I
was inspired to create a series of life-size ink and charcoal
drawings depicting the vitality of the shrubs, grasses, and flowers
reclaiming the graves post-excavation. The Necropolis 6 series
signifies the cyclical nature of life, the fact that through death
the body transitions from one that consumes to one that provides
nourishment. In this process, the matter of the body merges
with that of nonhuman organisms, dispelling the hierarchy of
dominance developed by Western man. My goal is to generate art
that continues a dialogue with posthumanist theory and explores
how acts of entombment and excavation affect the land and
embody the interconnected relationship we humans have with the
environment.