Talya Lubinsky

Fellow: PhD

Talya Lubinsky was a doctoral fellow at the CHR from 2018-2020. She is also an artist from Johannesburg. Her research focuses on material relationship between permanence and disintegration, with a focus on cemeteries as landscapes in which the supposed permanence of memorialization comes into contact with the ephemerality of the disintegrating body. This investigation was manifested in a recent exhibition, Marble Dust (January 2020), where Lubinsky traced the contours of decomposing cemetery records and carved them out of marble slabs. The fragility of the paper archives is inverted when it is rendered in marble, a stone that is commonly used for headstones. Here, taking seriously the inherent material qualities of commemorative forms becomes a productive tool for contemplating their meaning.