Featuring María José Contreras Lorenzini, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Kamau Ware. Introduced by Carol Becker, Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts. Moderated by Marianne Hirsch and Diana Taylor, Co-Directors of the Zip Code Memory Project.

How can the devastating but radically disproportionate losses caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic be memorialized? While acknowledging the social inequities and injustices the pandemic has exposed, might local memories of loss and neglect be transformed into a practice of justice and collective healing? What aesthetic memorial forms and strategies of engagement best foster the work of Repair?

This second roundtable on Reparative Memory will approach the urgency of such challenges in conversations between noted artists who have responded to histories of violence and loss in different geo-political contexts by engaging communities in participatory memory projects. Their visionary projects have mobilized painful memories, leaving space both for mourning and for imagining potential futures. Each artist will share their process and the challenges faced in creating communities of memory.

We invite the public to participate in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s memorial project A Crack in the Hourglass, currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum. Click on the PARTICIPATE link to send an image of a family member or friend who passed due to COVID-19. The piece will draw it in hourglass sand.

This is part of a series of conversations on “Reparative Memory” in conjunction with Columbia University School of the Art’s theme of “Repair” and the Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair based at the Center for the Study of Social Difference with generous funding by the Henry Luce Foundation.