“America’s COVID-19 Memorial”
Biennial of the Americas is asking everyone to honor those who didn’t survive pandemic
Even as vaccination rates improve, public tributes and memorials that would help us process the COVID-19 pandemic have been slow to appear.
It’s not simply that we can’t gather, said FloraJane DiRienzo, deputy director of the Biennial of the Americas. It’s the sheer enormity of it. The Western Hemisphere has been hard hit by the pandemic, accounting for nearly 50% of the 2.7 million global deaths attributed to the disease — despite having only about 13% of the
world’s population.
“We’re one of the best groups that can bring artists to the
table around this conversation, which is what the Biennial has done for the last 11 years,” DiRienzo said of the nonprofit art and ideas festival. “No group is better suited to tackle a challenge like this. And it is a challenge. How do you capture what 1.3 million deaths looked like?”
As a major cultural event focused on the Western Hemisphere, the Biennial of the Americas is launching the “Americas COVID19 Memorial,” a project that invites the public — both commissioned artists and non-artists — to contribute drawings for a virtual exhibition to launch later this year.
“Anyone residing in the Americas can submit a memorial drawing through an open submission process, beginning March 30,” DiRienzo said. In late May, submissions close, followed by the launch of the online exhibition and public voting. In August, prizes will be announced.
Amid that, Biennial curators Maria Paz Gaviria and Derrick Velasquez will help select 20 artists who will each receive $1,000 to contribute to the “Americas COVID-19 Memorial,” organizers said.
Pre-pandemic, the Biennial featured heads of state, celebrities, renowned artists and authors for various panels and daring art openings in Denver, the festival’s main hub. This year, it’s presenting online programming starting at 9 a.m. Friday, March 19, with a “coffee chat” that lays out the contours of the project (register for free at bit.ly/3qVLLwH).
Panelists for the “Public Memorials and Social
Memory” streaming event will include Brown University scholar Renée Ater, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Black Cube director Cortney Stell, and James E. Young of the Institute for Holocaust Genocide and Memory Studies. It begins with an original poem recited by Colorado Poet Laureate Bobby LeFebre and delves into memorials and processing grief, organizers said.
“Our creative community has spent the last year processing this, putting words and images together for things we can’t begin to articulate,” DiRienzo said. “We’re hoping to be a platform for that creativity, and from what I’ve heard from artists, they’re ready to do this. They’re looking for opportunities.”
The question is how the public will respond. The pandemic is not over, despite the rush to return to some version of normalcy
in many areas. Marinating in the losses of the last year may be too emotionally and mentally taxing for some who haven’t yet gotten over those events. Zoom funerals and quarantined mourners don’t really cut it.
That’s why the tributes we’ve seen so far, artistic or not, have been a rising tide instead of a flood. At noon on March 12, the bells of the City and County Building chimed once for each month of the year that passed since the pandemic began. Mayor Michael Hancock urged people that day to observe a moment of silence at noon for Denver residents who died from COVID-19. (Hancock’s own moment was streamed live on social media channels.)
Last summer, RedLine Contemporary Art Center debuted “COVID Walls,” which invited black-andwhite photos of people had died from COVID-19 for public, outdoor display. Denver visual artist Adrienne DeLoe launched the online “Pandemic Portraits,” while performing artists got creative in adapting to conwho stantly changing health mandates with outdoor and socially distanced shows that acknowledge the global struggle.
It’s not just in Denver, of course. In New York City, projections on bridges have memorialized the 30,000 or so New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19. And that’s to say nothing of the street artists and muralists who have memorialized other recent deaths from police violence, such as George Floyd and Elijah McClain. Sculptures and permanent memorials to all of these losses — such as a massive public memorial proposed in Uruguay, billed as the world’s first — will take much longer to materialize.
“Everyone’s pandemic experience has been so different, so I anticipate the drawings we’ll get from Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean will really be through the lens of those individual artists,” DiRienzo said, noting artist Rafael LozanoHemmer’s fascinating “A Crack in the Hourglass,” which uses artificial intelligence to transfer usersubmitted photos of the deceased into temporary portraits built from grains of sand, according to ArtNet.
“Some, like ‘Hourglass,’ will try to capture what individual deaths look like, and some will try to take on the 1.3 million and show the true gravity of the situation,” DiRienzo said. “But it’s having the diversity and variety of artists together that will make this really thought-provoking in a way we haven’t seen yet. It’s part of our responsibility, and part of our public emotional health, to make space for this.”