Photo: Megan Paradis Hanley
Or view the Memorial Toolkit by scrolling down
Photo: Erik Mc Gregor – 2020
The tradition of making memorials for the dead is an ancient one practiced in various cultures throughout the world.
Engaging in this practice marks an intention to honor and remember the dead. Made from simple resources, a grassroots memorial is a common gesture of mourning and remembrance that can carry deep meaning and resolve.
Memorials are a flexible folk art form for expressing grief. This tradition accommodates change. It evolves according to human need. We feel that need strongly right now, with nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. lost to Covid-19 related causes.
In the wake of catastrophe, most individual or community-initiated memorials are ephemeral, or short-lived: assembled out of grief, they are immediate in their recognition of sudden, incomprehensible loss. The format varies according to location and means, but most memorials are made from readily available materials—candles, paper, fabric, flowers, plants, photos, written messages— which can be assembled, managed, and disposed of when the time comes. Memorials can use common elemental materials such as shells, rocks, earth. Or they make use of well-known religious symbols: the star of David, the cross, the lotus, the lamp. Memorials combine different elements to create a place of remembrance. Sometimes unusual but resonant items are used in memorials. The ones made by our team, Naming the Lost Memorials, often re-purpose face masks as name plaques and use butterflies as a symbol of movement and hope.
We don’t have to go too far to find models for making Covid-19 memorials. Many of us have seen local memorials that appear in our neighborhoods after a tragic loss. The spontaneous memorials that were made in the days after September 11th used materials at hand—flowers, candles, photos—to create a landscape of mourning at Union Square, Washington Square Park, and other places throughout the city. Street memorials have a certain power to stop pedestrians in momentary acknowledgement. Those lost to Covid19—nearly 200,000 people—deserve our grief and a place to remember them by name, a place that draws attention to the loss we feel.
Photo: Megan Paradis Hanley
If loved ones or friends have died from covid-19, you will no doubt make a memorial in their name, perhaps featuring a photo and emblems that represent their lives. Naming the lost is so important. If you need, we provide public online resources on our website and in this packet to help you find publically-available names of those in your community who have died of covid-19. Also, you can search local sources where you live: newspapers, community bulletins, and so on. You may honor a single individual or choose a specific group: a family, health care workers, nursing home residents, and others. We encourage you to make naming the lost a central feature of your memorial. Incorporate names and allow people to add names to your memorial
if they choose.
The most important element in creating Covid-19 Memorials for A Labor of Mourning is the names of the dead. You may name someone you know personally or use these online resources to find publically-available names of many of those lost to covid-19. We encourage you to include names, not numbers. In the memorials we make in NYC, we write names of the dead on decorated masks, on paper butterflies, and on paper hearts (download templates here). The names were beautifully, lovingly scripted in bright colors, sometimes including the word ESSENTIAL under each name.
Think about where you want to place your memorial. Placement will to a certain extent determine design. You might set up a memorial on a staircase, a stoop, in a window, on a street corner, in a tree bed, in front of an apartment, or in your front yard, you might make something smaller, more intimate. If you are working with others to make a larger memorial, you might build in a park or in front of a place of business, including funeral homes or nursing homes. You may need tables, or do as Naming the Lost Memorials often does: make a hanging memorial using available fences. Fence memorials afford room for spreading out, and they allow for secure attachment of items using zip ties, pins, etc. Just remember: don’t block entryways, sidewalks, curb cuts, etc. SOME PLACES REQUIRE PERMISSION—Parks, public plazas, lobbies, fences surrounding public and private property. Seek permission where needed, or be prepared to move your memorial if you set up without permission.
Depending upon where you live, you may want to make your memorial on a city street or on a mountaintop, by the sea or in a suburban front yard. Wherever you decide. Memorials vary depending on location and on how many makers contribute. They can be participatory, with people leaving names of the dead, messages, candles, photos, drawings, flowers, tokens of their own. Or they may be solitary, made to honor and remember a particular person and kept for viewing only on a stoop, or in a window. Memorials can also be made to send a message of concern. In the case of Covid-19 memorials, we NAME the lost because their names have been turned into numbers, and those numbers too often have been denied. We also do this because contagion precludes normal memorial and funeral practices.
Once you have a place in mind and know its approximate size, design your memorial for that place. For the most part, grassroots memorials are public in some way. They are meant to be seen and engaged. But certainly there are no rules! See what you already have that might be useful. What is the primary material you want to use? Photos? Fabric? Flowers? Masks? Gloves? Borrow a few things. Buy a few things. Take a few measurements. Review the name or names of those you will honor and decide how to inscribe them. Our Naming the Lost Memorials templates (see namingthelost.com/memorials-templates) provide printable images that can serve as name plaques if you like. These can be made colorful with markers or paint. Or, you can make your own.
Covered cardboard boxes, milk crates, or old furniture (stools, small tables) work well for building a multi-layered memorial on a staircase, stoop, in a window, or on a street corner or in front of an apartment. You can make a very simple memorial with one box or a larger one using a combination of boxes and crates. On a fence use zip ties to secure objects and rain-proof tape to secure paper items such as poems, messages, photos. On the ground a circle of electric candles with names displayed is beautiful. Repeated elements—images, lights, photos, symbols—can be effective. Traditional materials include candles (not to burn but only to represent), electric votives candles, flowers, messages of mourning, poems, personal tokens. A piece of clothing, a shoe, a hat, or other personal item might be added. Mirrors, bangles, and shiny materials also are useful. Lights may be added using battery powered candles or holiday strings. With regard to flags, use U.S. Flag images at half-staff in black and white, national flags from Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia representing countries of essential workers and immigrants. Be creative: memorials can be made in many ways using many different kinds of materials. (For inspiration, see our Image Bank at namingthelost.com/memorials-toolkit for a visual record of many kinds of memorials made over the past 20 years or so).
Photo: Erik Mc Gregor – 2020
Try to build in a sheltered place. Unless you are building on your own property or have permission, make a plan in advance for taking your memorial down if asked by authorities. If weather threatens, a tarp or plastic painter’s cloths usually suffice to cover your memorial during bad weather, unless you face a long downpour with wind. We have found Tyvek to be an ideal material to create upon, as you can paint or draw on it, and it can withstand water. However, coating your artwork in an acrylic sealer like polyurethane can also help your work survive outside.
Take care of your memorial. Let family, friends, and neighbors know you have made your memorial and why. Host a vigil at the site to read the names of the dead or tell their stories. But BE SAFE: Wear a mask at your memorial site and require others to do so as well. Maintain social distance. Please post a Safety Sign at Your Memorial (You can download one at namingthelost.com/memorials-templates.)
If you would, please photograph your memorial and upload a selection of up to 10 photos to our “Covid-19 Memorials Project Archive” at City Lore. City Lore is a 35 year old arts organization in New York City that preserves local and traditional culture. Please include the name of whoever took the photograph or video. You can find the form at namingthelost.com/memorials-toolkit.
Photo: Lyra Monteiro
We of course invite you to name and honor someone you know who has died. If you do not have a personal connection, this list of public sources may be used with discretion.
These are just a few examples of online memorial projects. You may know others.
Please take some time to read through and acquaint yourself with essential people who have died in the pandemic. Choose one or more people to name as the focus of your memorial.
Photo: Erik Mc Gregor – 2020
The tradition of making memorials for the dead is an ancient one practiced in various cultures throughout the world. Often made from simple resources such as flowers, paper, photos, and candles, a memorial is a common gesture of mourning and remembrance that can carry deep meaning and resolve. We saw this expression widely in evidence in New York City after September 11th. We also see it in neighborhood assemblages for the murdered and roadside memorials marking the site of a fatal accident. Engaging in this practice can be a sacred or secular activity, or both. This tradition is old because it accommodates change. It evolves according to human need. We feel that need strongly right now with nearly 200,000 people dead in the U.S. from Covid-related cause.
Here are a few suggested readings if you care to deepen your experience of the ephemeral memorial tradition by learning more about it and its associated meanings and practices.
Jill Bennett. “Art, Affect, and the ‘Bad Death’: Strategies for Communicating The Sense of Memory Loss.” SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28/1 (2002): 333-351.
Tim O’Brien. “The Things They Carried.” The Things They Carried, 1-26. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
Jack Santino. “Performative Commemoratives: Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death.” Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. Ed. Jack Santino, 5-15. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
Mikelle Smith Omari-Tunkara. “Ancestors, Gender, Death, and Art.” Manipulating the Sacred, 89-110. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Diana Taylor. “’You Are Here’: H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of Performance.” The Archive and The Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, 161-189. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Kay Turner. “September 11: The Burden of the Ephemeral.” Western Folklore 68/ 2&3 (2009): 155-208.
Margaret R. Yocom. “’We’ll Watch Out for Liza and The Kids’: Spontaneous Memorials and Personal Response at the Pentagon, 2001.” Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. Ed. Jack Santino, 5-15. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
James E. Young. “The Countermonument: Memory Against Itself in Germany.” The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. Eds. Neil Levi and Michael Rothberg, 431-38. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Orig. in The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meanings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Steve Zeitlin and Ilana B. Harlow. Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning. New York: Perigee, 2001.
Email us at namingthelostmemorials@gmail.com with questions or ideas.
Naming The Lost Memorials is a five-year public art project honoring those who died from COVID-19.
NTLM invites up to 30 partner organizations, representing NYC communities most impacted by the ongoing effects of the pandemic, to participate in the project through a series of workshops and art builds.
namingthelostmemorials@gmail.com