Wisteria Only Grows in a Crowd
2023

In 2023, I was lucky enough to recieve funding to pursue research abroad. I proposed a project where I’d visit Ireland and Denmark in order to reapproach the infamous bodies found in bogs across North West Europe. These bodies, such as the Tollund Man, are believed to have been Iron Age people sacrificed and then buried in the wetlands, which were viewed as a liminal zone between earthly and heavenly fields. The low oxygen, low temperature, and low pH levels of bog soil result in a remarkable ability to preserve otherwise biodegradable matter, making the bodies appear as though only recently deceased.

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For this reason, they’ve come to be discussed as strange objects of curiosity, but in my project, I wanted to reanalyse them as people. Bog bodies like the Tollund Man are believed to be sacrifices, and likely consented to their own killing. I wanted to try to show these sacrifices as a contemporary norm, as an honour, as a pressurised expectation, as a choice, as a coercion.