In connection with the project 'How I Experience Grief: A Study of Grief Processes', artist Britt Boesen was commissioned to illustrate the participants' experience of grief through sculptures.

Britt Boesen draws on her background as both an anthropologist and a visual artist in her works. The piece GRIEF 'It feels as if a piece of my heart has been ripped out' was thus created based on the bereaved's personal accounts of experiencing grief, and crafted in burnt-out red clay with chamotte.

Regarding the work, Britt Boesen states: 
The heart is often used as a metaphor for many of life's great emotions. But we also have a physical heart, and upon a death, the bereaved's pain in the heart can feel very concrete, as the quote also conveys. The physiological heart is therefore an obvious choice to show grief. The hearts express different experiences of grief. Some things heal, but leave scars. Even with persistent cracks. Some parts of grief lift us up and create a new channel. Some grief takes over our heart and hollows it out with its own unique logic. The hearts are not in any specific order, and they may be touched, as long as it is done carefully.

See more of Britt Boesen at: www.brittboesen.dk