Gluskema is a word that describes a small chest or container where the skeletal remains of the deceased are placed in a practice generally referred to as secondary burial.
That practice was common during the first century CE in the jewish world on the land of what is Israel today.
The deceased would be buried in the ground or in a niche hewn in a burial cave, and after about a year, when the remains have shrunk to leave a skeleton, the bones were collected and inserted into an ossuary. The minimum length of the ossuary must therefore have been on shorter than the length of the longest bone, which is the femur, and not narrower than the widest bone’s width, the skull.
Mezzotinta on PVC
50 x 70 cm
2018
