Volume 2: Birth & Death
“We begin to die from the moment we are born, for birth is the cause of death.” - Gautama Buddha
Life is not a line, but rather a series of moments, a snapshot in time between 2 major points. birth, the beginning of life and death, its end. Or is it? Some argue that death is another adventure, a continuance or a new beginning, but not the end. Art has long experimented with capturing these moments of and between birth and death, even beyond death. Life as series of emotions, fragments in time, immortalized in paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography. Artists are firsthand witnesses of life happening and trapping it, like flies in amber, in their art.
Birth & Death is the theme of the February edition of Bloom’s quarterly journal, Acanthus. Artists were invited to explore literal, metaphorical and philosophical ideas of birth and death. From organic life to the rise and fall of cities and empires; ideas, objects, hopes, dreams, everything has a start and a finish.
The issue begins at the point of conception, or a symbolic form thereof, with Lebanese artist, Rabih Khalil's Ovoïdales. Bloom's gallerist, Elizabeth Hefty-Khoury exposes her personal exploration of prescient grief in her series, Beginning & End followed, perhaps naturally, by Serbian Mila Gvardiol's own intensely personal experience of grief in her works, Landscapes of the Soul. Italian painter, Angel Galvan allegorically examines time and death in her highly symbolic paintings. It finishes with not organic birth and death, but that of a city, with Lebanon's Manar Ali Hassan's Ode to Beirut, created after the catastrophic explosion which the city's core in August 2020.
Life is not a line, but rather a series of moments, a snapshot in time between 2 major points. birth, the beginning of life and death, its end. Or is it? Some argue that death is another adventure, a continuance or a new beginning, but not the end. Art has long experimented with capturing these moments of and between birth and death, even beyond death. Life as series of emotions, fragments in time, immortalized in paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography. Artists are firsthand witnesses of life happening and trapping it, like flies in amber, in their art.
Birth & Death is the theme of the February edition of Bloom’s quarterly journal, Acanthus. Artists were invited to explore literal, metaphorical and philosophical ideas of birth and death. From organic life to the rise and fall of cities and empires; ideas, objects, hopes, dreams, everything has a start and a finish.
The issue begins at the point of conception, or a symbolic form thereof, with Lebanese artist, Rabih Khalil's Ovoïdales. Bloom's gallerist, Elizabeth Hefty-Khoury exposes her personal exploration of prescient grief in her series, Beginning & End followed, perhaps naturally, by Serbian Mila Gvardiol's own intensely personal experience of grief in her works, Landscapes of the Soul. Italian painter, Angel Galvan allegorically examines time and death in her highly symbolic paintings. It finishes with not organic birth and death, but that of a city, with Lebanon's Manar Ali Hassan's Ode to Beirut, created after the catastrophic explosion which the city's core in August 2020.

acanthus_feb_22_birth___death.pdf |
