Art activism against genocide: ‘One Million Bones’
Art installation that took over the National Mall in 2013 now off a path in Silver City
On a recent hike, I stumbled upon an inspiring and powerful art activism installation nestled in a peaceful meadow just outside the Gila National Forest. Located on the Bear Mountain Lodge property in Silver City, the One Million Bones Project is sure to captivate all who have the opportunity to explore it.
The Old Windmill Trail at the Bear Mountain Lodge brings you to a clearing with bones arranged in labyrinth patterns. There are rib bones, femurs, hands, skulls, vertebrae — you name it. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear these aren’t real human bones; rather, they’re sculpted from clay. Many of them have initials etched in the side, which serve as reminders of the tens of thousands of students who participated in the project.
“It’s about social art practice,” said Naomi Natale, who founded the One Million Bones Project in 2009, in a film regarding her initiative.
More than 150,000 participants from all 50 states and 30 countries came together to mold these bones. Together with the Albuquerque-based Art of Revolution organization, the million bones were laid at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2013 to recognize ongoing genocides, such as those in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma and Somalia.
According to the United Nations Genocide Convention, genocide occurs when acts like killing and seriously harming people are committed with intent to destroy “in whole or in part,” a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Today, global conflict continues to result in great human losses, which reiterates the need to spread awareness on the issue.
Long-standing regional conflicts in Sudan boiled over into government-endorsed militia groups ravaging villages in the early 2000s. As a result of the government’s air attacks and the militia group Janjaweed’s land-based scorched-earth campaign, around 400,000 people were killed and millions more were displaced.
Within the last seven months, an ongoing war in Darfur has resulted in more than 9,000 people killed and millions more displaced, leading some experts to warn the risk of another genocide remains high.
The arrangement at the National Mall evoked national and personal questions. At the most basic level, whose bones are these? On a larger scale, in one of the United States’ most prominent public spaces, what role does our government policy have in preventing these deaths? What is our responsibility to victims of mass violence? The installation inherently required many collaborators to build, set up and transport the bones, which invites each participant to spend time thinking about these questions and recognize genocide.
Naomi Natale’s 2010 TED Talk on One Million Bones communicates her hope for the project to prompt action through grief upon viewing the mass grave. She condemns the fact genocides happen “on our watch,” and calls for more advocacy from U.S. politicians. Our physical human makeup is the same: These bones represent anyone and everyone, even ourselves, in hopes of promoting solutions to preventing genocide. Natale quotes the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. … We belong in a bundle of life.” Thus, international cooperation to stop genocides is crucial. As Natale put it in her TED Talk, we lose so much every time a person is killed.
The exhibition ended up in Silver City on a beautiful 180-acre property bordered by the Gila National Forest. Though the project was on the national stage 10 years ago, it continues to be relevant and mind-opening. If you happen to be in Silver City sometime, be sure to check out the bones. The project is ongoing, so if you would like to get involved, you can make a bone at Syzygy Tileworks in Silver City or help transport the last pile of bones out to the meadow at the Bear Mountain Lodge.
As I wandered through each cleared path through the bones, the space surely impacted me: Being surrounded by bones reminded me of the impermanence of life. The bones rest in that forest meadow, awaiting their return to the ground, and someday the meadow will absorb and grow over the art completely. Just as we all experience the impermanence of our lives, the bones will leave only their legacy to future generations — but the project’s meaning must live on. The bones allude to heavy themes of mortality and violence, but also remind the viewer that we all become bones — and are thus deeply connected.