Wendy Fernstrum
St. Paul, MN
www.fernwerks.com
IG: @wendyfernstrum

Homeland
2024
Intaglio, lithography, letterpress, pen and ink
9″ x 7″ x .5″ (closed); 9″ x 14″ x .25″ (open)

Artist Statement

The third in a series, Homeland memorializes those who died while homeless in Minnesota in 2022. In addition to listing names of the deceased, Homeland answers questions that arose for me while working on memorial books for prior years:

When someone who is homeless dies, how is the body identified?
How are next of kin identified?
What happens to the body?

My interviews with a medical examiner confirmed that some, possibly many, of the deceased are interred in a cemetery without a gravestone. Those human beings. who lived on the margins, remain unacknowledged and overlooked after death. Homeland, in addition to being a memorial, portrays an imaginary cemetery that gives visibility to and honors the deceased.

Homeland is bound as a double pamphlet with a hard cover. The first pamphlet describes the process that is followed upon the death of someone who is homeless. The second pamphlet is the cemetery registry that lists the name, age, location of death and location within Homeland cemetery of each person. While the map and registry grid are letterpress printed, I wrote by hand with pen and ink the entries, speaking the name of the deceased out loud as I wrote their name.

The images throughout the interior of the book, printed intaglio, are from photographs of actual cemeteries. Among them are the gravestones of two individuals who are listed in the Homeland registry.