Reparative Memory

This virtual roundtable features renowned artists and designers Michael Arad, Susan Meiselas, Doris Salcedo, Hank Willis Thomas, and Mabel O. Wilson. Introduced by Marianne Hirsch and Diana Taylor, Co-Directors of the Zip Code Memory Project. Moderated by Carol Becker, Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts.

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 conversation 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 of these artists will discuss one project, sharing their process and the challenges faced in creating communities of memory.

This will be the first 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.

Co-presented by the Center for the Study of Social Difference; Columbia University School of the Arts; Columbia World Projects; The Forum; The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery; and The Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities & the Arts at the City College of New York.
 

Columbia University School of the Arts recognizes Manhattan as part of the ancestral and traditional homeland of the Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger people. By acknowledging legacies of displacement, migration, and settlement, we are taking a small first step toward the long and overdue process of healing and repair. The School of the Arts continues to confront and address issues of exclusion, erasure, and systemic discrimination through ongoing education and a commitment to equitable representation.