Artist Kevin Ryan’s response to the World Trade Center attacks
was concrete and immediate. Ryan
photographed posters of the missing posted by families all over the
city, and created a mosaic out of their portraits.
Painter Sarah Yuster, whose depiction of the pre-September 11 skyline
had long been popular, particularly on Staten Island, returned to paint
a firefighter and the post-disaster cityscape.
Perhaps most strikingly though, is that much of the post September
11 art seeks to turn viewers into creators.
The week after the attacks, Margaret Kerr devised "September 11: In
Ashes," an installation in the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington,
New York, that asked visitors to use a gray ribbon to tie a personal
message to a brick. Together the participants were building a memorial
wall to commemorate the tragedy.
The List
PAINTINGS AND MURALS
Before and After 9/11 James Gilroy
Gilroy's pre-September 11 paintings show an uncanny resemblance to the
events he witnessed that day. He returned months later to paint images
of the emotional aftermath.
Dactyl Foundation for the
Arts & Humanities , 64 Grand Street Through September 28 Call (212)
219-2344 for more information
Firefighters' Commemorative
Sarah Yuster
Yuster's painting is a full-length, iconic portrait of a firefighter
exhibited
alongside a painting of the transformed skyline. A painting of the horizon
before
September 11 completes the exhibition.
Civil Court of the City of New York, Castleton and Bement Avenues, Staten
Island
Opens on September 13 and will be on display indefinitely.
Forever
Tall
Hope Gangloff and Jason Search
This is a building sized mural of the New York skyline, with the shape
of the
World Trade Centers included in a floral pattern.
6th Street and Cooper Square
Mural for Police Department Mounted Unit
Marybeth Milius
The mural, on the barn housing horses of Mounted Police Unit D, is in
Pelham Bay Park. According to an article in the Bronx
Times, the artist painted the Manhattan skyline with the sun rising
behind it to "offer hope."
"September 11" Ilya Shenker
Shenker will present
his painting as part of the anniversary event "Artists of the Russian-American
Community Respond to September 11."
Cultural Center for Soviet Refugees, 45 East 33rd Street September 11,
6:30 p.m. Call (212) 686-0199 for more information
September 11, 2001: "Tragedy, Honor and Memory" Bruno Surdo
This 35-foot mural was originally on display at Chicago's Daley Plaza.
According to the
Associated Press, Surdo, a Chicago artist, incorporates debris,
such as business cards and letterhead and concrete dust, in the painting
which depicts World Trade Center, victims, survivors, rescuers and somber
Americans. ``I felt it (the debris) would just add to more of what occurred,''
Surdo said. ``There was some connection from the work to the actual
site."
Using Double Vision
In commemoration of the September 11 tragedy, seven painters attempt
to see the world anew.
Organization of Independent
Artists
Various exhibition spaces September 9 to December 27 Call (212) 219-9213
for more information
PHOTOGRAPHY
A Place in the Sky
Flo Fox
Photographs of the construction of the World Trade Center.
Abrams Art Center, Henry Street Settlement (www.henrystreet.org ), 466
Grand
Street Monday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Call 212 598-0400 for
more
information
Faces
of Ground Zero
Joe McNally
85 life-sized portraits of Ground Zero rescue workers, survivors and
family
members of the victims of September 11, taken by Life magazine photographer
Joe
McNally.
Rockefeller Center September 11 to 23
49
of 2870 - A Memory of September 11
Kevin Ryan
This virtual exhibit displays a mosaic of portraits of 49 victims of
September 11, taken from the photos that were posted on the streets
of New York in the weeks after the attacks.
Here is
New York
A "Democracy of Photographs," the project collects pictures that people
have taken, with the only requirement being that the photos relate to
September 11. Entries are scanned and sold to the public for $25 per
print, and have been collected into a book. Proceeds go to the Children's
Aid Society WTC Relief Fund.
Scalo Project Space, 560 Broadway, #301 September 5 to November 2, Tuesdays
through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Other exhibitions are taking place
in cities throughout the United States and abroad.)
Missing
Martha Cooper
In an online exhibit, photographer Cooper documents the spontaneous,
temporary memorials andexpressions of support for rescue workers that
appeared in New York City in the days following September 11.
A Missing Piece
Cheryl Sorg
This piece, wrote Joanne Silver in the Boston
Herald, has the handmade look of a quilt, but with little squares
of paper held together by tape, instead of stitched patches of fabric.
When backlit, the image reveals 3,062 tiny candles: one for each person
who died in the September 11 attacks.
September.eleven.net
Gary Suson
Works in this virtual exhibit by Gary Suson document September 11 and
the months
afterward, as workers struggled with the recovery effort at Ground Zero.
OTHER VISUAL ARTS, GROUP SHOWS AND INSTALLATIONS
9.11.01
Flux Factory
An on-line project, consisting of portraits and testimonies, documenting
people's
emotional responses to September 11th.
Brooklyn Working
Artists Coalition 20th Anniversary Outdoor
Sculpture Show
More than 30 sculptors from around the country have contributed work.
According to the group's web site, many of this year's artists are addressing
September 11th either directly with tributes and memorials, or indirectly
with sculpture that suggests a rekindling of hope.
Empire/Fulton Ferry State Park (Water Street at the foot of the Brooklyn
Bridge)
Until September 15 Call (718) 596-2507 for more information
Drawn Together
Joan Waters
This project aims to help people understand the enormity of the World
Trade Center tragedy by asking participants to create a life size drawing
of the World Trade Center, done in chalk, like the outline of a victim
at a crime scene. Place is provided for comments. A web site provides
plans.
In a radio report, commentator Charles
Osgood said that people have drawn the images on parking lots, at
community colleges, schools, and parks. Their goal, he said, is to create
"a place where people discuss and contemplate the disasters through
a creative physical experience."
Even
the Birds were on Fire
Artists Respond to Terrorism
Brooklyn Artists Alliance
This exhibit includes around a huge collage, four artists books, photographic
installations of the posters of missing people, and dramatic detritus
from the "even the birds were on fire" performance tour. The exhibit
is accompanied by an audio installation of location sound from September
11 and texts by poets and political commentators including Amiri Baraka
and Noam Chomsky. The sounds of planes, helicopters and military jets
circle the exhibition space relentlessly creating an atmosphere of
anxiety reminiscent of 9/11. The work, which has been performed throughout
the country, attempts to evoke the emotional atmosphere of the bombing
of the World Trade Center and its aftermath. Visitors to the installation
are invited to leave memorial objects or write their commentaries about
9/11, the ongoing war, and the exhibition itself onto a paper wall.
These offerings will be incorporated into the exhibit and the performance.
The performance, wrote Bridget O. Shea in the Columbia
Chronicle Online involves Marshall Weber, one of the creators, "covered
in white dust, looking dazed as he stumbled about, with sounds of planes,
screaming, and voices on loudspeakers from overhead. . . . The performance
ended with Weber, who was a witness, walking into the audience, burning
his own hair to convey what the smell of the disaster was like."
Grace
Pietro Costa
A tower of light, made of concentric neon circles with 3,000 pieces
of paper at its base, bearing the names of those killed in the attacks.
Interspersed with those names are blank pieces of paper, representing
the unknown number of homeless and the undocumented victims of September
11. Writing in the New York Times, critic Grace Glueck (http://www.pietrocosta.com/glueck.htm)
said the "ethereal looking structure" oddly evokes death while also
serving as a memorial for September 11.
In Memoriam: September 11, 2001
Moshe Gershuni
Etchings from the Israeli artist's Kaddish series feature one of the
first four words from a verse in the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of personal
loss.
Jewish Museum,
1109 Fifth Avenue September 11 only Call (212) 423-3200 for more information
In Memory: Exploring the Repercussions
Michele Pred
Her work includes a painted airplane wing, dedicated to the passengers
of the Sand Francisco bound United Flight 93, one of the hijacked planes,
and sculptures created from objects confiscated at airport security
checkpoints.
In
Memory: The Art of Afterward
The Legacy Project
Including works by artists from 16 countries on five continents, the
exhibit displays art related to the themes of loss and remembrance,
tracing the process of trauma as it changes with time.
Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, 135 East 22 Street, September
6 to October 3, 2002, daily from 12-5 (Thursday, 12-7)
Microviews:
Artists' Documentation of the World Trade Center
From 1997-2001, nearly 140 artists used temporarily vacant space in
Tower One of the World Trade Center as studio space. This exhibit features
photographs, drawings, and video and sound recordings made by artists
and offers a counterpoint to the iconic public images of the Twin Towers
that emerged last fall.
Urban Center Galleries, The Municipal Art Society of New York, 457 Madison
Avenue Until October 10 Call (212) 753-1816 for more information
Poster
Project
Hans Haacke
This project by Haacke, described by Artnet
News as a "radical conceptual artist," consists of a series of white
posters with negative space in the shape of the World Trade Centers.
These were placed throughout the city so that the walls or posters behind
Haacke's work would fill the negative spaces, showing that New York
is now seen only after being filtered through the memory of September
11. The project was installed from March 11th to March 25. An online
site has a downloadable version, where the negative space is filled
by the contents of the user's desktop.
September 11: Artists Respond
In more than 60 panels, each nine by nine inches, artists from across
the nation remember the catastrophic loss of life on September 11.
American Craft
Museum, 40 West 53rd Street September 11 to October 20. Admission
is free on September 11 Call (212) 956-3690 for more information
September 11: In Ashes
Margaret Kerr
Launched the week after September 11, this installation was intended
to allow people to actively commemorate the tragedy. Visitors to the
Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, last fall were encouraged
to add a brick with a personal message to the installation, "building"
the work themselves. Within a few days of the installation, two dozen
people had added messages. "I felt a tremendous honor," Kerr told Newsday
in September 2001. "I hope people will come who don't personally know
someone who is lost, but will feel welcome and free and moved to write
something down." The bricks with gray ribbons
joined some 400 bricks with black ribbons commemorating AIDS victims.
Skyline Remembered, Skyline Sought John Digby
Twenty collages by Digby reflect on the pain of September 11.
Russian
American Cultural Center , 55 John Street, 14th Floor September
10 to October 8 Call (212) 744-5168 for more information
Tribute
in Light
From March 11 through April 13th, 2002, two large beams of white light
were projected into the sky in lower Manhattan. Describing the project,
Gustavo
Bonevardi, a member of the Creative Team that designed it, said
at the time, "This really has become very much a memorial to those who
lost their lives. The idea of light is almost like the souls of those
who died rising up to heaven. At the same time, it still does have a
double meaning. It is a memorial, but I hope that it's also light as
life, light as hope, light as renewal."
Unity Canvas
Some 300 works from around the world present a collective artistic response
to September 11.
Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, 135 Broadway, Brooklyn September
7 to September 29.
DANCE AND PERFORMANCE ART
AfterImages
Marathon of reflective dance and performance art brings together 34
artists from across the spectrum. Performances will be given every hour
on the hour between 6 and 10 p.m. on September 11. In each hour, there
will be 50 minutes of performance, followed by a 10 minute break.
Dixon Place at
Vineyard 26, 309 E. 26th Street. For more information, call (212) 532-1546
Complacency: A Renegade Action Kat Skraba
In this work, the Los Angeles performance artist, gagged with an American
flag, lies on a military stretcher and is placed on a side walk in Hollywood.
Skraba says his work is intended to cite U.S. complacency and political
and militaristic interventions abroad as one of the many reasons for
the September 11 attacks.
Event
Merce Cunningham Dance Company
This tribute for September 11 and in honor of what would have been the
90th birthday of Cunningham's musical collaborator John Cage was performed
at the Evening Stars festival in Battery Park. In its review of the
hour-long piece, the New
York Times said, "The performance was especially lively and varied,
ranging from the space-filling circles one remembered from Mr. Cunningham's
Ocean’ to a cascade of wonderfully
executed duets and group sections in which dancers continually replaced
one another. Mr. Cunningham's bow at the end drew lusty cheers."
Part of the Evening
Stars Music and Dance Festival, a series of free performances a
number of dance companies, including the Noh Drama Theater of Japan,
that pay tribute to the September 11 tragedy. Performances are from
7 to 9 p.m. in Battery Park.
For more information, call (212) 219-9401
Happiness
Laurie Anderson
The almost two-hour piece by the performance artist weaves together
her personal stories with more public stories of loss and remembrance,
moving from accounts of mummification in ancient Egypt to Anderson’s
memories of a childhood hospital stay. More minimalist that many of
her works, "Happiness" focuses on sounds and words. "A resident of New
York City, Anderson has experienced close-up the destruction, losses,
and aftermath of the September attacks," critic Krista L. May wrote
in PopMatters.
"Happiness gives us insights into an artist's attempt to acknowledge
these painful events -- moments that are at once both personal and extremely
private -- and to see the impact of these events on her worldview and
imagination."
Out of Place
Valerie Norman
Norman, a New York dancer, choreographed this dance quartet dedicated
to the people and families who were displaced by the attacks on 9/11.
At Williamsburg Art
and Historical Center on Sept. 14. 135 Broadway , Brooklyn
Contact: (718) 486-7372 or (718) 486-6012.
United We Fall
Susan McKeever/ Williamsburg Dance Company
An exploration of dance and movement reacting to the patriotic response
following 9/11.
At Williamsburg Art
and Historical Center on Sept. 14. 135 Broadway , Brooklyn
Contact: (718) 486-7372 or (718) 486-6012.
At Williamsburg Art
and Historical Center on Sept. 14.135 Broadway , Brooklyn
Contact: (718) 486-7372 or (718) 486-6012.
