Memento Mori

One famous Roman mosaic from Pompeii shows a skull balanced on a wheel, flanked by symbols of wealth and poverty, with a plumb line hanging above to mark equality in death. Later, European painters filled vanitas still lifes with skulls, burned down candles, and hourglasses, visualising the same idea for new audiences and new theologies. Memento mori art spans cultures and centuries, showing that the reminder of mortality is a universal human concern. It demonstrates that art can serve as a tool for contemplation, forcing us to confront what we often prefer to ignore.

Placed alongside funerary jars and scavenging birds, memento mori objects show another way societies integrate death into daily life. Instead of handling bodies, they handle attention, returning the mind to a fact it prefers to forget. The Human Archives treats each of these not as morbid curiosities but as tools created by different cultures to keep time, value, and mortality in conversation. Memento mori represents the human need to remember death. It shows that death is not just something that happens, but something we need to keep in mind, using art and symbols to maintain that awareness.