untitled (A Dance of Death)

approx. 115 x 690 cm, oil and graphite on raw linen, 2009

Exhibition view: © Dominique Uldry, Kunsthalle Bern
Individual photos: © Martin Wiesli

(Triptych available, CHF 19’000.–)
Inquiries to: kontakt ( a t ) agentur-des-sterbens.ch

In the autumn of 2009, an archaeological excavation on the medieval gallows fields of Bern uncovered a grim chapter of the city’s past: over 40 skeletons of young men — most barely older than 25 — lay in single and mass graves. Many were buried face-down, hands bound, stacked upon each other — not gently laid to rest, but violently discarded.

I was granted permission to visit the excavation site and make sketches. The bones were broken, weathered, furrowed by torture and time. They reminded me less of anatomical specimens than of cubist forms — ornamental, fractured, almost dancing in their furrowed silence.

In Bern, the Danse Macabre runs deep — an endless round where the living and the dead take each other’s hand. The famous Bernese Totentanz, originally created by Niklaus Manuel (1516–1519), shows skeletons dancing with people from every walk of life. The living stand frozen in terror, while the bones lead the rhythm with wild abandon.

This European tradition felt more foreign to me than the satirical works of José Guadalupe Posada from Mexico. His dancing skeletons — above all, La Catrina — are not moralists, but mocking companions. In Mexico, death is no taboo, but a familiar presence one greets with colour, laughter, and marigolds.

The bones of these "poor sinners" now rest in a climate-controlled chamber of Bern’s Archaeological Service. But in my triptych, they rise again: drawn in layers on raw linen, dancing across the surface, challenging eternity, laughing, mocking, celebrating.

They made the leap — from pit to steel, from damnation to a new, quietly smiling existence.