THESIS: Phantom Limb

Phantom Limb

Abstract by Deborah Wang

The living interact with the dead. We live in a funerary landscape that surrounds us, that is inside us. We fold memories of the dead into the space of the living. We embrace death, even while we turn away from it.

Phantom Limb presents a series of encounters with death, and a reflection on loss, in photographs and sculptures. Phantom Limb speaks to the relationship between the living and the dead as trace—vestiges of what is now absent. With photographs and sculptures, I turn towards death, deaths I have and have not experienced. I create a funerary terrain of my own making. I prepare for loss.

The examining committee is as follows:

Supervisor: Donald McKay, University of Waterloo

Committee Members: Dereck Revington, University of Waterloo
Ryszard Sliwka, University of Waterloo

External Reader: Ian Carr-Harris, OCAD University



The Defence Examination will take place on Monday March 23, 2015 3:00 PM ARC 1110

A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.