- I think that the monuments that are most interesting
are the monuments that either disappear,
question themselves,
that complicate some of these stories
that we tell ourselves.
(siren wailing)
I have for a long time
proposed a more anti monumental approach,
an approach that is more
of a platform for people to self represent.
I got COVID in early March here in New York.
It was pretty bad for me, I have asthma.
It was humbling to feel this incapability to breathe.
I felt that a lot of stories that I was hearing
had to do with family members
who would go into a hospital, sick,
and you could not go with them,
two weeks later they were dead
and you couldn't even go to their funeral.
As a Mexican, I think that we think a lot about death
and all the rituals, the toasts
and the things that we do to have closure
and to bid farewell are critical
to our survival as a community.
And that could not happen.
The Brooklyn Museum is working to make connections
between this artwork and the communities here
in New York to create a way
for people to be able to come together to remember our loss.
- People don't really talk about death in Chinese culture.
It's seen as very superstitious
and kind of might bring on more death or more bad luck.
Regardless of the pandemic, that's always a thing.
And I think with the pandemic, people are very scared
or very apprehensive to talk about it.
My aunt passed away this past March.
She was our everything, essentially.
It was hard for us to kind of process and even recognize
that my aunt died because like the last time
we saw her was the Lunar New Year, right before.
One thing you do during a funeral
for Chinese people is that you burn joss paper.
So, there are these paper mache sculptures
that are representative of material goods.
So it could be a home, a car, iPhone
Because we didn't get to experience that,
we didn't have like a physical space to talk
about the memories and then have the comfort
of just like physically being with people
that you're close with to just hopefully get
to the next day without being so sad about it.
- My studio and I, we decided to make an artwork
that would allow people to come together
and see a live event.
We thought that it was important that it'd be something live
that somebody from any time zone could log into
and experience, together with their loved ones.
A Crack in the Hourglass is basically a robot arm controlled
by a custom made software.
You send a photograph of a loved one or a family
or friend over a website called acrackinthehourglass.net.
It gets analyzed and it very slowly is drawn
by dropping sand from an hourglass.
As this image is appearing,
there's two cameras that are broadcasting the action live.
So when you participate,
you can invite friends to log onto the website and see it.
The work is the result of a collaboration
between people at my studio,
the work comes out of discussion,
comes out of a desire from all of us to do something
that would allow us to, I guess not feel so lonely.
When you enter the hall at the Brooklyn Museum
and you see all of these faces,
you notice that there is an exchange of glances
around the room.
Most of the people in the portraits are looking back at you.
Most people choose photographs where the subject
is not distant or looking away
but they're looking straight at the camera.
There's a moment which the image tilts slowly
and gravity pulls the sand down
making the portrait disappear
and recovering all the sand to be recycled
into new portraits.
All the portraits, so far, hundreds of them are all made
with the same small amount of sand.
And for me, that was really important
because it was a sense of universal solidarity
around this and a sense of connection.
Whenever I'm optimistic
I think that there is a sense of empathy,
and there is a sense
that this could happen to anybody anywhere in the planet
to an extent unites us and unites us
in understanding something that's invisible.
Disappearance, sometimes the ephemeral helps you remember.