Featuring María José Contreras Lorenzini, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Kamau Ware.

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 roundtable will approach the urgency of such challenges in conversations between noted artists who have responded to histories of violence and loss in vastly different geo-political contexts. Their visionary memorial projects have mobilized painful memories, leaving space both for mourning and for imagining potential futures.

Each artist will discuss their engagement in these issues, sharing their process and the challenges faced in creating communities of memory.

This is the second in 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.