While attending a recent residency in Corsicana, Texas, Cara Despain stumbled upon the exhibition catalog for The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy. A striking 14th century alabaster sculpture of a robed figure, tears hidden beneath an oversized hood featured on the cover resonated immediately and deeply with Despain.

Originally intending to create works for her Carbon Paintings series that uses burnt fire debris collected from wildfire sites, Despain decided to pause on the final piece to instead embody the image of a mourner—an idea that still felt relevant to her work about climate collapse. With the large piece of off-white muslin destined for ruin with charcoal, she aimed to recreate an expression of deep sorrow.

In the past, aristocrats commissioned artworks to adorn their tombs, including mourners to grieve their deaths. Seven centuries later, the artist wishes to shift this lamentation toward what should be mourned in 2025. Despain placed herself inside the mourner’s shroud and staged a photo alone in the studio. With this act, she embarked on an elegy for the planet.

About the Artist:
Cara Despain is an artist working in film and video, sound, sculpture, photography and installation addressing issues of land use/ownership, climate change, visualizing the Anthropocene and the persistent problematic dimensions of frontierism and their impacts on eco- and social systems. She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and currently lives in Miami, Florida and works between the two. She holds a BFA from the University of Utah (2006). She was selected for a 2021 Harpo Foundation Award, and in 2021 she completed her first permanent public art commission for the Underline with Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places. She was also a finalist for the Creative Capital award in 2021, and participated in a fieldwork mentorship program with Southeast Arts and Fieldscreen International which was supported by a grant from the Australian Government. Her work is included in the Rubell Family and Scholl Collections, as well as the State of Utah, Salt Lake County, and Miami-Dade County and Miami International Airport art collections and was recently added to the New Mexico Statue University Art Museum permanent collection. Recent solo exhibitions include “Specter New Mexico” at the New Mexico State University Art Museum in Las Cruces, New Mexico (2023); “Specter” at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, Florida (2022); and “In Memoriam: Carbon Paintings” at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah (2021). Selected group exhibitions include “2023 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art”, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida; “#FAIL”, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana (2022); and two-person exhibition “Fractured Landscapes” at Arts and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida (2021).Despain’s work has been featured in numerous publications such as The Guardian, Hyperallergic.com, Thirdtext.org, The Art Newspaper, Sculpture Magazine. A short documentary about her and her work aired on Art Loft, WPBT and PBS and screened at the Miami International Film Festival (2016). She has lectured at museums and universities across the country, and has presented her work at symposia such at IKT International Curator Association Congress (2019), Common Field (2020) , Ground at University of Southern California (2021) and the College Art Association conference (2023).