Dr Pia Interlandi is a lecturer in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT where she is the coordinator of Material Studies within the Bachelor of Fashion(Design)(Honours). She is also a design studio leader and is a member of the college ethics committee. Her research stems from her design practice Garments for the Grave, through which she uses the tools of fashion design to address rituals and realities of death.
 
Pia is an active community death practitioner, certified funeral celebrant, and freelances as a creative ritual facilitator within the funeral industry. In 2014 she co-founded, and is the current president of, the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN), a not-for-profit community organisation which hosts death literacy events for the public and also professional deathworkers.
Pia is an ambassador for Dying2Know Day and is a member of the Order of the Good Death. She has spent over ten years immersing herself into the funeral industry, where she has researched forensic elements of material decomposition, specialises in co-creating death rituals of body care and dressing, and spent two years working at the award winning Clandon Wood Natural Burial Ground in the UK, where she was involved in over 100 natural burials and funerals.
Pia’s work has been featured in a number of media outlets, and has been the subject of four documentaries including a half hour feature for ABC Artscape, ‘Soul’, in which she designs a burial garment for her first client. In 2014, she was nominated and was runner-up at the Good Funeral Awards for the Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death. In 2017 she was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York for a 'Little Black (Death) Dress', emphasising the importance of dressing and touch at the end of life. ​​
- KEYNOTE ADDRESS -
Friday, 7:30pm

Ritual Facilitation: Co-creating Meaning Through Garments for the Grave

In almost every human culture, when an individual is prepared for burial or cremation, their body is dressed in a garment that will literally and symbolically become part of the body as it returns to the earth. 
 
Entering the field of end-of-life through the unconventional area of fashion design, Pia will discuss her practice Garments for the Grave in which she co-creates funeral garments, shrouds and artifacts with a person who is dying and their family. These fashionings become tools for creating rituals surrounding the care and disposal of the body of someone after their death, engaging and activating the family and community in its care.
Combining elements of fashion design and funeral celebrancy, Pia’s practice and creative works have been used to initiate conversation, highlight the importance of home based death care, and change end-of-life practices around the world. Most notable in recent years, she was commissioned to make a Little Black (Death) Dress, which emphasized the importance of touch as ritual in death, for the Museum of Modern Art in New York which was visited by over 580,000 people during its display.
 
During this keynote presentation Pia will share some of her experiences and insights on how creative and arts based tools can be used to create ritual for the dying, ​and contribute to positive experiences for those who live on after them.
 
Participants will be invited to participate in the making of a ‘community shroud’ over the duration of the conference. ​

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​We’ll see you October 4!