According to the nonprofit research group, Gun Violence Archive, almost 40,000 Americans are killed by gun violence each year, a tragedy exacerbated by recent economic issues related to Covid-19. Staged within the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, The Gun Violence Memorial Project was conceived by American conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas and Mass Design Group in partnership with gun violence prevention organisations Purpose Over Pain and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.
Free to the public, the poignant installation comprises four white houses, each constructed with 700 transparent glass bricks, a tribute to each person killed by guns each week in the US. The houses are already home to hundreds of personal artefacts, including photographs, baby shoes, graduation tassels and jewellery.
Over time, cavities will be filled with deeply personal objects of remembrance donated by the families of victims. Using the design as a prototype, the ambition for the project is a permanent national memorial that pays tribute the lives of those killed by guns.
RELATED STORY
‘My family felt the effects of gun violence first hand when my cousin was murdered during a robbery in 2000,’ says Thomas, who is also artistic director of Songha & Company, a conceptual public art practice named after the artist's cousin, Songha Thomas Willis. ‘My life, and by extension my artistic practice, has been influenced ever since.’
The exhibition will also display excerpts from Comes the Light, a forthcoming documentary film exploring the effects of gun violence created by Haroula Rose and Caryn Capotosto.
The Gun Violence Memorial Project will be on view physically and online until September 2022 and is presented in conjunction with ‘Justice is Beauty: The Work of Mass Design Group’, a timely new show surveying the work of the socially conscious nonprofit architecture firm.
‘As the recent tragic shootings in Colorado and Georgia sadly underscore, gun violence isn’t an abstract concept, but an epidemic that strikes every American community,’ said Brent D Glass, interim executive director of the National Building Museum.
INFORMATION
The Gun Violence Memorial Project, until September 2022 at the National Building Museum, Washington, DC. nbm.org
ADDRESS
401 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
-
‘I wanted to create a sanctuary’ – discover a nature-conscious take on Balinese architectureUmah Tsuki by Colvin Haven is an idyllic Balinese family home rooted in the island's crafts culture
-
‘Concrete Dreams’: rethinking Newcastle’s brutalist pastA new project and exhibition at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle revisits the radical urban ideas that changed Tyneside in the 1960s and 1970s
-
Mexican designers show their metal at Gallery Collectional, Dubai‘Unearthing’ at Dubai’s Gallery Collectional sees Ewe Studio designers Manu Bañó and Héctor Esrawe celebrate Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary forms
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in PhiladelphiaArtist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connectionWallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
-
Marc Hom reframes traditional portraiture in Cooperstown, NY‘Marc Hom: Re-Framed’ has taken over the grounds of the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, planting Samuel L Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and more ‘personalities of the world’ into the landscape
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathyCreative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & VinoodhPhotographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New YorkArtist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
-
How the west won: Ivan McClellan is amplifying the intrepid beauty of Black cowboy cultureIn his new book, 'Eight Seconds: Black Cowboy Culture', Ivan McClellan draws us into the world of Black rodeo. Wallpaper* meets the photographer ahead of his Juneteenth Rodeo
