© Michel Linssen | Redferns
A Seattle museum has come under attack over an exhibition about grunge band Nirvana on its wording. Behind the display is a guest curator who chose words which are certainly unusual and not acceptable to most of its visitors.
Instead of Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain had shot himself in 1994, the installation says that he “un-alived himself” at the tender age of 27. The term was coined as a euphemism by users on the social network TikTok to get past its guidelines against objectionable speech-so any kind of promotion or even description of self-harm or suicide. But bringing such Internet lingo into a museum hasn’t gone over well with many.
Yet another sign attempts to justify what the curator did by invoking social media to trigger conversations about mental health issues. While one can assume that was done with the purpose of triggering dialogue, to make light of a tragic reality through using an invented word, as was the case in the death of Cobain, is risqué. The exhibit text reads, “Unalive,” openly known to the online community as how to subvert industry censors.
By Sunday evening, it seemed, the public had been loud and clear enough to be heard. Photographic evidence from this week showed that the contentious placard had been rewritten to replace use of the ambiguous “un-alived” term with a plainer description stating that Cobain “died by suicide.” While the opening of discussions is admirable, what this example has taught us is that attempts to change serious topics such as mental health and death demand careful consideration.
