Daily Nourishment for September 11, 2024: The Art of Remembering 9/11
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 50 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
Offerings from Emily Hartford will continue on September 12. Today, I’d like to invite you to engage with art and your memories and feelings connected to 9/11.
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale while looking at the art below by Manju Shandler or by looking at the images on her website. If you scroll down to near the bottom of that page, you can see several of the individual 4x9 paintings.
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GESTURE, 2001-2003, by Manju Shandler, is a painting installation with one painting for each person who died, based on the information she had at the time, and paying tribute to the victims.
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Here’s more from Shandler’s website: “GESTURE is a memorial installation comprised of almost 3000 individual paintings, one for each person lost on September 11, 2001. In the years since then GESTURE has been shown frequently throughout the United States.
In honor of the 20th Anniversary GESTURE was exhibited at The Pelham Art Center. All 2,977 painting were exhibited for this solo exhibition.
Eight hundred and fifty GESTURE paintings were exhibited at The National September 11th Memorial Museum for close to two years in honor of the 15th anniversary of the attacks in the exhibition Rendering The Unthinkable:Artists Respond to 9/11.
Photo by Manju Shandler
Prompt.
Here’s an excerpt from “How memorials to 9/11 help us remember and mourn”
Compared with realistic, figurative memorials commissioned by previous generations, these three 9/11 tributes can feel abstract, personal, even puzzling. Why the shift?
“This new set of memorial makers is engaging in metaphor, trying to evoke complexity,” says Spencer Bailey, author of the new book, In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials. He and other experts suggest that creators of memorials now recognize that collective trauma transforms over time. As pain changes, so do the edifices we construct to remember it.
It’s an approach that lends itself not only to the shared grief of 9/11, but also to other tragedies. Here’s how such tributes in metal, stone, water, and fire are helping people mourn and move forward.”
Look at images of the 9/11 Reflection Pool Memorial for a few minutes. One thing to note about the two Reflection Pools: The names of those lost that day are engraved in this structure, not in alphabetical order, but each name was placed next to someone that person knew.
Practice.
Here’s more from and about Shandler and her GESTURE series:
“The simplicity of paying tribute to those who I would never meet but whose lives were so close mine in our shared city gave me purpose. It was a way of directing all the feelings of rage, sadness, and fear into something proactive using the tools of my life as an artist.– Manju Shandler (https://rendering.911memorial.org/artists/manju-shandler/)
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Freewrite for seven minutes on any feelings and memories you have of 9/11 and how making art or engaging with art can help you navigate those feelings.
Or take notes or journal in response to the quotes and art above.
Want More?
GESTURE by Manju Shandler
The Art of Remembering 9/11
Artistic responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – in pictures
How Memorials Help Us Mourn
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Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—New Resource: Parenting with Art® Lectio Divina Cards Information about ordering these cards can be found in my Books + Spiritual Direction + Retreats & Gatherings email newsletter that went out last night. To stay in the loop on all of my work, writing, book recs, and more, subscribe to that weekly newsletter at charlottedonlon.com/subscribe.
—The September Co-Writing calendar is live.
—Spiritual Direction for Writers® + Enneagram for Creativity Gathering will take place on Friday, September 27th and Saturday, September 28th. You can register here. All registered participants will have access to recordings.
—The Great Belonging Project is live here and The Great Belonging Project October Refresh will take place Oct 1-Oct 31. The Great Belonging Project October Refresh is open for registration with Early Bird pricing of $10.
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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