Requiem: Stranger Than Fiction

The designer’s drive to collect and interest in how archaeologists interpret the fragments they find, led to Erfgoedhuis – an archaeological museum in Eindhoven. Through a generous gift, Yang received the remains of a human being that the museum had classified as a ‘worthless skeleton’. Using fiction, he imagined a character and life for the bones, giving the remains new value. The character becomes the focal point of the project, with a cabinet of wonders created as an eternal resting place. It represents a starting point for a reconsideration of the way society treats human remains, proposing resting places that honour lives lived, instead of neutral, cold encasings of ashes.