Grace

This project emerged through Naeem Mohaiemen’s collaboration with Maine resident Karen Wentworth (1956-2023). Four years ago, Karen received a terminal cancer diagnosis, which she approached with a seeker’s curiosity. During his Research Fellowship with the Lunder Institute for American Art in 2021, Naeem learned of Maine’s Death with Dignity Act (2019) and he contacted Karen, the second person in Maine to legally secure medicine for dignified end of life process. Their meetings, correspondence, conversations, and friendship have resulted in grace, a new video that reflects on Karen’s life and poses the question: What does it mean to accept a body’s decline? To accompany this work, Naeem proposed that Karen select works from the Colby Museum’s permanent collection. Her choices, which filled the gallery dedicated to a solo show, focused on three of her lifelong interests—photography, folk art, and the elegiac. On January 12, 2023, two months after the museum premiere, Karen departed at a time of her own choosing. While writing a book on cemeteries in 2003, Karen researched sustainable burial grounds and purchased a burial lot for herself in Maine. A stone placed on the lot gives her arrival date as 11-11-1956 and goodbye date as “infinity.”