2020 Archive

Naming the Lost Memorials began working together in May of 2020 when a group of community organizers, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Make the Road New York, the Caring Majority, and others, organized a 24-hour online vigil to read aloud the names of those who had died from COVID in the United States in the first few months of the pandemic. This group also saw a need for offline action, and they helped organize a group of volunteer artists and activists to set up physical memorial sites in each of the five boroughs. With social distancing in place, there was nowhere for New Yorkers to come together to mourn, so our memorials were meant to provide a space for communal grief.

Over Memorial Day Weekend in 2020, we installed memorial sites at Jacobi Hospital’s EMT station in the Bronx, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the NYC Housing Authority’s Seward Park Extension in Manhattan, Corona Plaza in Queens, and at Verrazano Nursing Home in Staten Island.

Jenny Romaine, Raphael Mishler, Jason Hicks, and other artists affiliated with the cooperative space Building Stories painted banners reading “Naming  the Lost” in many of the languages commonly used in the neighborhoods where the memorials were being installed. Our first memorials featured individuals’ names written on facemasks and pinned to fabric or mesh, so they could be quickly removed in case of bad weather or interference from security. At the time, we did not seek permission for our public memorials, but as the project went on and we created larger-scale installations, we found it helpful to build institutional partnerships so the memorials could remain on view and well-cared-for over longer periods of time. 

One of the important aspects of the memorials was to leave space for people to add their own tributes. We always leave materials (permanent markers, safety pins, blank templates) pinned to the fence so that passers-by can add their loved ones’ names to the memorial.

Following those first memorials, which were up for just a few days, we received invitations to partner with community groups to continue creating spaces for COVID remembrance in the midst of other organizing. So we set up a memorial altar at an action in July 2020 to fund excluded workers (people who weren’t included in the social safety net and emergency aid packages passed that year) and outside a nursing home in upper Manhattan, Isabella Center. 

In September of that year, we organized a distributed action called “A Labor of Mourning,” led by Kay Turner, where we created a memorial-making toolkit that we shared with individuals around the country. Participants in A Labor of Mourning set up their own memorials in their homes, neighborhoods, and public spaces. 

In October, we began partnering with Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture without Borders, to set up a Day of the Dead memorial at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. We also helped Bronx Documentary Center to build an ofrenda and a digital memorial to be projected in their storefront space. Community members could email photos and obituaries to be included in a slideshow, which ran in the window each night.