Amsterdam based collective Semester 9 invites London-based gallery, Shipton and curator Isabella Greenwood – Vigil: Death and the Afterlife, brings together 27 contemporary artists to confront the most elusive of human experiences. Through immersive installations, sculpture, painting and multimedia works, Vigil navigates the liminal thresholds between life, death, and beyond, offering a space for speculative mourning and existential contemplation. Exploring the industrial space of Loods into an experiential site, the show weaves together visual, conceptual, and speculative works that challenge traditional narratives around mortality and invite viewers into a space of contemplation and aesthetic  disruption.

Vigil unfolds in three thematic chapters each meticulously designed to guide viewers through different stages of mortality and existence where each chapter delves into distinct stages of existential transition, drawing from diverse perspectives from bodily-decay, transcendence to post-human speculative futures: I. Towards the Afterlife: Corporeal Decay— The exhibition begins with an exploration of death’s immediacy through works that evoke decomposition and bodily transcendence II. The Liminal Realm—this section delves into the mythic suspension between life and death, where the corporeal body begins to transmute into the astral body III. Beyond the Afterlife– which looks beyond human mortality to a speculative, post human future, considering the emergence of new ecologies, hybrid entities, and bioengineered organisms. These works gesture towards the possibility of a world continuing in the absence of humanity, urging viewers to consider what life—or death—might look like beyond the anthropocentric lens, guiding viewers through various metaphysical and cultural landscapes.

By navigating this curated sequence of states, visitors are invited to engage not only as passive observers but as active participants in the ritual of keeping vigil—a process of bearing witness to embodied presence. .“This exhibition is not merely about death, but about the lived experience of being with deat —an attempt to navigate the liminal states that underlie our existence,” states curator Isabella Greenwood. “By confronting these spaces, Vigil disrupts the Western tendency to relegate death to the periphery and reimagines it as an active, generative force. To keep vigil is a radical interruption—a refusal to let the symbolic order quietly assimilate death into the banal structures of modernity.”

Venue and Architectural Significance
Set in the historic Loods 6, a former shipping warehouse turned cultural hub, the exhibition’s location serves as an architectural metaphor for the themes of liminality and transformation. Built in 1921 and once occupied by squatters and artists, Loods 6 has evolved into a dynamic space for contemporary art, echoing the exhibition’s interrogation of presence, and perpetual becoming.

Conceptual Overview
Drawing from the concept of a ‘vigil’—a period of wakefulness between death and burial—the exhibition explores how individuals bear witness to mortality in a world increasingly detached from its rituals. At the core of VIGIL is the refusal to let death be relegated to the margins of contemporary consciousness. Inspired by philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Achille Mbembe, the exhibition invites audiences to participate in an embodied encounter with death, where the act of witnessing transforms into a visceral, active engagement with decay, metamorphosis, and the unknown.