Sander Coers‘ project Eulogy addresses the theme of intergenerational and postcolonial trauma through the lens of his deeply personal family history. The Dutch artist begins with a powerful and personal image: a photograph published in the Bali Post depicting his grandfather being carried out of his home in a body bag after his death in 2020. This photograph becomes the starting point for an exploration of silences, losses, and unspoken memories that traverse generations, questioning the fragmented and selective nature of memory.
To tell this complexity, Coers uses a wide range of media: family archives, personal photography, and tangible materials such as fabric, wood, ceramics, and artificial intelligence. The latter plays a crucial role in the project, acting as an “artificial collective memory” that generates new images from family photo albums. The AI-generated images exaggerate traits such as masculinity and trauma, highlighting the artificiality and partiality of memory.
The project is distinguished by the use of works on plywood, such as I Mistook The Laughter For Love and I Felt Very, Very Cold, where AI-generated images are printed with UV rays and arranged in diptychs or triptychs. These compositions fragment and anonymize the subjects, evoking the discontinuous and subjective nature of memory. The color palette is inspired by the tones of the original photograph, a thread that unifies the works and symbolically connects them to the artist’s personal history.
The element of concealment is also evident in the oil-painted wooden beams, which partially obscure the printed images. This gesture alludes to how memory idealizes the past, hiding uncomfortable truths. A similar approach is found in the Obituary series, where archive images UV-printed on ceramic tiles are cut out to emphasize specific details. The hand-glazed colors reflect those of the original photograph, reinforcing the connection between personal and collective memory.
Finally, the fabrics and tapestries produced from the same original image further accentuate the concept of memory as a weave. The use of the tapestry, a medium historically associated with storytelling and the representation of collective memory, becomes a symbol of how personal and collective stories are intimately intertwined.
With Eulogy, Sander Coers not only explores trauma and postcolonial legacies but also questions the very nature of memory. Through a masterful use of family archives, personal photography, artificial intelligence, and tangible materials, the project unveils the construction of memory and how remembrance is preserved, reinterpreted, and passed down through generations.
