Memory, Remembrance and Forgetting
My work is a form of negotiation and reinterpretation of the past based on our present needs. In Uses of Heritage, Laurajane Smith states, “...memory is an active cultural process of remembering and of forgetting that is fundamental to our ability to conceive the world…Remembering, as James Wertsch (2002) argues, is an active process in which the past both collectively or individually is continually negotiated and reinterpreted, through not only the experiences of the present but also the needs of the present. The past can never be understood solely within its own terms; the present continually rewrites the meaning of the past and the memories and histories we construct about it within the context of the present.”
Alternate histories, and personal histories urgently need to be told and remembered, and done so over and over again. My work is an active attempt to make meaning of our personal and collective histories, and maintain a perpetual rewriting and reinscribing what is found there.
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What Would a Memorial to One Million People Look Like?
Just two weeks ago the U.S. reached one million deaths from Covid-19. You might’ve shrugged off this news, since one million deaths feels too big to comprehend. I understood its magnitude when I heard a reporter on NPR say “One million deaths is far more than the number of people who have died from AIDS in the U.S.” since the beginning of the AIDS crisis.
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Are All Historic Buildings Worth Preserving?
When I began writing about the demolition of the Grand Prospect Hall, it seemed like the loss of this beloved Brooklyn building was inevitable. Should this building be preserved? And what are the guidelines for deciding the answer to this question?
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Attestant I & II
This artwork was partially inspired by the novel Austerlitz, by WG Sebald. The protagonist discovers his lost history as a Jewish child rescued on the Kindertransport. While revisiting places from his childhood he states “...this cast-iron column, which with its scaly surface seemed almost to approach the nature of a living being, might remember me and was, if I may so put it...a witness to what I could no longer recollect for myself.”
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Monument (Tripartite Arch)
This piece was created on a site that had formerly been a Jewish Stone Monuments business on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The exhibition memorialized the site and the Lower East Side’s rapid developer-driven change.