NYC: KRISTINA LIBBY 'HEARTBLEED'
This week She Performs’ NY correspondent, Caroline Blockus visited SPREADLIGHTNYC and sent us this moving reflection on Kristina Libby’s Heartbleed, an art memorial to those lost to COVID-19.
Let’s start the new year mindfully. While there are many reasons to look hopefully into the coming months, it is also important to reflect, and more importantly, to heal from what we went through last year.
Acknowledging the pain, trauma, and struggles we had to face in 2020 – and its repercussions, which we are taking into 2021 – can help in processing and moving forward. Aside from all political, social, and economic factors, it is our health (and particularly mental health) that will need the most time to heal. While all the aforementioned aspects play into our wellbeing, this article will highlight one of the most universal consequences experienced due to COVID-19. It seems like almost every person has lost, or knows someone who has lost, a loved one to the virus. With so many sharing the same experience, the same sense of loss and grief, it becomes incredibly more important to create spaces, where we can – safely – find and share sympathy and relief. Within art, memorials have always provided public sites for shared grief and commemoration of those we lost. However, due to the continued efforts of slowing the spread of the virus and maintaining safety measures, it has been very challenging to provide and find a place to grieve and heal collectively.
This week I went to SPREADLIGHTNYC, a public space exhibition displaying installations of visual and performance art, fashion exhibitions, and architectural build-outs on the ten storefront windows of 100 Franklin Street in New York City’s TriBeCa. And while there are some fun and refreshing displays, such as the DJ LiveStream that may tempt you to a spontaneous dance session, it was one particular piece that emotionally touched upon the very current and pressing need for some closure: Window #1, Kristina Libby’s Heartbleed.
Window #1: Kristina Libby Heartbleed
Created by Kristina Libby, realised with Charlie Whitney, and accompanied with music by Timothy Cahill, Heartbleed is a memorial intended to provide and promote healing in our community. It is a video installation depicting a waterfall-like stream of rose petals and a heart-shaped flower wreath sculpture piece. Each petal represents a life lost to COVID-19, its fall timed to correspond to a day.
The video installation grew out of Kristina’s The Floral Heart Project, which aims to bring the floral heart project to cities around America and to create a living public memorial. The project’s website offers different ways of participating in the movement, from signing a petition to creating a formal memorial, to initiating bringing the digital Heartbleed projection installation and/or a Floral Heart to your own city or community.
“What began as an art project has grown into a cry to create a national COVID-19 memorial. We need a place to express trauma, to spread community, and to ensure we are more prepared for crises in the future.”
While the aesthetics of this particular piece can be debated, it is the intention and the effect that make the installation stand out. Photos and videos are certainly not representative of the impact. While the statistics and victim numbers are intense, seeing them visualised has a mesmerizing and heartbreaking effect. The video starts with one petal, but it becomes too many too soon and for too long, resulting in a violent yet delicate experience. One full round of petals falling lasts over ten minutes. Art can help to cope with grief, trauma, anxiety, and other psychological sensations by engaging a community of shared experiences.
To New Yorkers: don’t hesitate - go and see the exhibit (I recommend seeing it after dark). Heartbleed is open 24/7, along with the rest of SPREADLIGHTNYC (until 28 February). To everyone else: consider reaching out and collaborating with The Floral Heart Project. It can be very soothing to have something meaningful to do and somewhere tangible to go, even if just temporary. And with enough support, this initiative could grow into a worldwide movement for the reckoning of this global pandemic.
WWW.SPREADLIGHTNYC/KRISTINA-LIBBY
Caroline Blockus is an exhibition content curator, interpretive planner and She Performs’ New York correspondent.
Photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated.
