This series of pet sarcophagi is Degeyter’s first search for an alternative approach to transience. Despite the rapid social changes that we are going through in western Europe, we have been using more or less unchanged rituals to cope with death for centuries. Usually a sad affair that offers little relief for the bereaved.
Degeyter’s search for alternative rituals therefore began at the beginning. The first contact with death is often the passing of a beloved pet as a child. An animal that grew up outside its natural context, of which the previous generations were domesticated for years, dies. The question arises whether the animal within its artificial context showed more kinship with a toy than with its wild counterpart. Burying a pet in the garden, a context where it probably never has been its entire life, seemed a bit absurd to Degeyter.
A child is often not yet familiar with transience. When an animal is buried, it is gone forever without anything remaining. How can a child honor his or her pet if there is nothing tangible to honor? Preserving a pet in a toy sarcophagus, on the other hand, provides a physical souvenir that softens the bereavement process. The ultimate transformation into a toy that one can cherish seemed a logical continuation of the animal’s questionable reason for existence: pleasing a child.