Rituals of Commemoration
Miami Art Week 2021
Art that creates opportunities to engage in dialogue, influences opinion, and helps to create awareness that encourages civic discourse about justice.
Breaking down the silos between peoples and cultures and expanding opportunities to engage with authentic, real-world issues, Rituals of Commemoration is the culmination of seven years of work for artist Rosa Naday. What began as a gesture of anger and disbelief at the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014 developed into focused research, examination, and inquiry. The Washington Post and other non-governmental databases such as Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted record every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty. Since January 2015, police have shot and killed 6,732 people in the United States (to date). Although half of these people are white, Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Latinos, Native and Indigenous people are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.
This work focuses on documenting Black lives lost to police murders from 1979 to the present, sadly ongoing. The sculpture installation serves as a space holder, a memory legacy. It seeks to ensure that the names and lives of Black men, women and youth killed by police will not be forgotten. It insists on the dignity of these lost lives. It demands respect by creating a physical space of remembrance, a symbolic acknowledgement of a hard past and a painful present in the struggle for justice.
As one comes upon the physical space of remembrance, you encounter columns built of about 600 painted and inscribed bricks, (of the 1,558, work in progress) with the names and dates, representing the lives of Black men, women and youth lost up to this point. As one gets closer, some of names and dates spark an uneasy familiarity.
How to visualize such injustice?
This work is not merely an aesthetic, passive object. It is a starting place for asking questions about our assumptions regarding police violence, history, culture, and the consequences of systems of oppression, educational systems, and social justice. The artist challenges audiences of all ages, abilities, orientations, and cultural backgrounds to engage in brave and expansive conversations of issues relevant to their lives.
While differing views may sometimes raise discomfort and dissent, this work wants to be a conduit for open sharing and learning. It hopes to inspire partnerships within cultural, educational institutions and justice organizations that will result in civic action and encourage citizen participation and activism locally, nationally, and internationally.
Through art, education and engagement, I hope that we can build and maintain meaningful relationships among different communities and can move from learning about justice to creating it.
Learning for Justice
BELOW ARE SOME ORGANIZATIONS LEADING THE FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
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Justice For Jayvis Benjamin | MoveOn
Ohio Families Unite Against Police Brutality (ofuapolicebrutality.com)
TMF – Travon Martin Foundation (trayvonmartinfoundation.org)
Baltimore United for Change (bmoreunited.org)
Communities United Against Police Brutality (Minnesota)