worlds apart

At the south end of the British Museum's new Wellcome Trust Gallery are four massive papier- mâché figures hanging from the ceiling, part of a Mexican Day of the Dead installation called 'The Atomic Apocalypse'. They represent the four riders of the Apocalypse in the Biblical book of Revelation: war, pestilence, famine and death. This dramatic and powerful exhibit illustrates how, as people deal with sickness and trouble, they make many marvellous and extraordinary objects.

But, as the 'Living and Dying' exhibition reveals, they also sometimes invest quite ordinary objects with an importance and significance that goes beyond their appearance.

A multitude of fascinating objects, tiny and ephemeral, immense and long-lasting, grace the 'Living and Dying' exhibition. This long-term exhibition, which opened in November 2003, explores how people in many parts of the world understand and deal with the difficulties of life - with sickness and trouble, sorrow and need. It is also about how people seek to achieve health and wellbeing for themselves and their communities in the face of such difficulties.

The things people make, as much as the things they do, express their understanding of the world. The exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to exhibit some of the museum’s collections from the Pacific region, the Americas, from Asia, from Africa and from Europe. It is also an opportunity to show those objects alongside exhibits that question contemporary UK practice, to make the familiar unfamiliar so that it can be seen in the same frame as everything else in the exhibition.

Health and culture
The central argument of 'Living and Dying' is that the identification and treatment of illness and other kinds of bodily and social breakdown are culturally specific. Medicine and other treatments are a part of people's knowledge and practice, and they are a function of how people understand the world to work. Thus while in the UK today depression is often treated with medication, in other places it may be dealt with by rituals that manage spirits, or by holding a community meeting to deal with a dispute. In each case the cause is understood differently, and the treatment is appropriate to that cause.

The exhibition draws attention to the fact that while contemporary 'Western' society often focuses on the individual, in many places trouble and sickness are understood as being caused by a breakdown in relationship (with other people, with ancestors, with spirits). People manage relationships at a community level in order to prevent things going wrong.

Exhibitions are a distinctive means of communication. Not only do they focus on objects, but the arrangement of those objects is important to the ideas the exhibition communicates. 'Living and Dying' is on the major north/south route through the British Museum. It has several exits and entrances: some visitors will enter it because they are on their way to somewhere else. It is not possible to set out a narrative. The exhibition has therefore been divided into segments which can stand on their own, but which join together in several different ways.

As a touchstone for the ideas in the exhibition, at the south end of the gallery are the figures from The Atomic Apocalypse. At the north end, a series of images and quotations from poetry address trouble, sorrow, need and sickness. Together, these two sections set out some of the troubles that people seek to avert, or to deal with, in the rest of the exhibition.

Relationships
A series of case studies focus on the communal management of important relationships - with other people, spirits, animals and with the earth itself. In the western Pacific, people maintain and improve their relationships with each other both by participating in festivals and rituals, which draw the wider community together, and through a complex series of wealth exchanges. These link individuals and families together with ties of obligation.

In the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, by contrast, people are concerned to manage the spirits that inhabit the environment around them. For the Nicobarese, spirits are powerful and unpredictable, but they can be controlled partly through carved figures, which are thought to drive the evil spirits away. When a doctor-priest cannot treat an illness with herbal medicines, he will use one such figure to try to heal his patient.

The third case study investigates the importance of relationships with animals. Native North Americans are skilled hunters and fishers who have great respect for the creatures they depend on, treating them as non-human persons and praying to migrating fish, birds and mammals to ensure they return each year.

Relationships with the earth are investigated through a study of the Bolivian Andes. In this region there is a long tradition, reaching back to pre-Hispanic times, in which the earth is regarded as animate. Both farmers and miners make offerings to the earth to ensure its productivity. The case study focuses on a carnival in the town of Oruro, which expresses these ideas in new forms.

Everyday life
'Living and Dying' also looks comparatively at how people in different places deal with issues that we all share. One series of comparisons are entitled Life's Ordinary Dangers. This section discusses how people in different places deal with vulnerable times in our lives, such as early childhood, marriage and death.

Turkmen nomads, for example, who greatly value their sons, dress them while they are small in special tunics, which are embroidered with motifs and colours symbolizing life and fertility, and are decorated with small protective objects, such as bells and coins. The tunics are designed to safeguard the boys from many kinds of harm, and also develop in them the virtues of humility and good sense.

People often take great care of the dead, disposing of their bodies with care, and continuing to show them respect over a long period after they have died. In eastern Arnhem Land, Aboriginal Australians deal with the body in a series of rituals, designed to ensure that the spirit makes a final transition to the land of the dead. In the last ritual, some years after the death, the by-then dry bones of the deceased are cleaned, painted with red ochre, and then broken and carefully put into a hollow log coffin. The coffin is painted with designs that refer to the soul's hazardous journey to the land of the dead.

In sickness and in health
The second thematic section looks more specifically at how people respond to sickness and trouble by calling on the help of specialists of various kinds. This section, Your life in their hands, looks at the different ways in which the problem can be diagnosed and treated.

Although Western medicine is available in most parts of the world, in many places it coexists with or is subservient to other medical systems, such as the ancient Hindu health system known as Ayurveda, or people seek insights from specialists of other kinds, such as diviners, shamans and priests. These sections together provide a series of reflection on the diverse ways in which people deal with life, and a celebration of some of the many wonderful objects they make and use in doing so.

One of the most dramatic objects actually originates from the UK and is itself a significant departure for the British Museum. In the centre of 'Living and Dying' is a specially commissioned artwork entitled 'Cradle to Grave', produced by Susie Freeman, David Critchley and Liz Lee. Two lengths of knitted fabric contain a lifetime's supply of prescribed medicines for a man and a woman, based on actual medical records. Lying alongside the fabric are photos tracing life as lived and other medical interventions (injections, an artificial hip) as well as some of the other objects people use to ensure a sense of wellbeing (a glass of wine). The installation dramatically demonstrates the focus on the health of the individual body in the UK today.

Lissant Bolton is Lead Curator for 'Living and Dying' and Curator of Pacific and Australian Collections at the British Museum.

External links

• Living and Dying Exhibition (Details on the British Museum website)