Befriending Finitude is a performative workshop and toolkit focused on exploring how we “do” death. It responds to the lack of emotional education and the absence of spaces for organizing and reflecting on a broad understanding of death and dying practices. Through art, it initiates a process of reappropriation to help participants regain agency over this topic. Drawing from material collected over the four-year artistic research process Invisible Bonds: Performativity of Death in the Everyday, it aims to foster intimacy with the life–death cycle.

Focusing on how imagination, creativity, performance and symbolic objects can contribute to our awareness of different aspects of dying, the artist, together with others, investigates which processes we can reappropriate to foster a healthier relationship with finitude.

This platform is made up of various workshops that can be adapted to different contexts, where artistic experiences invite participants to explore, reflect on, and reimagine how do we do death. Each workshop is also tailored to the specific context—whether artistic, pedagogical, therapeutic, or community-based—and can include collaboration with professionals from other disciplines such as thanatologists, psychologists, anthropologists, funerary cooperatives, and others.

At the heart of every workshop is the belief that it’s possible to dignify the way we do death, and challenge the assumption that death is something we must face alone. Befriending Finitude ignite the transformation of our death practices—starting with ourselves.

Medium: performative workshop, symbolic actions, audio-walks, video narratives, performative writing, mapping, conversation

Year: 2025
Version: English and Spanish 
First workshop in: Espaço AND Lab, Lisboa, Portugal
With the support of: Cultura Republica Portuguesa y Direção-Geral das Artes

Concept: Cristina Maldonado
Artistic team:Isa Juchniewicz
In conversation with: Fernanda Eugenio 
Thanks to: Marcus Beuter
Production: GALA Gisel Vergara

Keywords: agency, continuity, funeral practices, death, mourning, transformation of death culture

Program:

and-lab.org: Befriending Finitude