NOW AVAILABLE: The Grief Deck from Princeton Architectural Press
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NOW AVAILABLE: The Grief Deck from Princeton Architectural Press *
The Artists’ Grief Deck
ALI Covid-19 response: An Arts-based Toolkit for Communal Grieving in a Time of Social Isolation
The Artists’ Grief Deck is an outcome of ALI’s work with the NYC Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NYCVOAD) beginning in the early Spring of 2020, when Covid-19 hit the US. It was produced in collaboration with artist Adriene Jenik, and it was completed in partnership with the National Hospice Cooperative.
COVID-19 presents a unique challenge, among natural disasters, to human culture. Loss is experienced on numerous levels, and it is ongoing. It is not geographically specific, and so there is no ‘getting out’ of the affected area to recuperate and heal. As it takes an enormous toll in human life, it also prevents us from gathering together to mourn, interrupting rituals of grieving across all cultures.
To address this complex set of problems, we convened an Artists Working Group on Communal Grieving, along with our disaster-response partners at NYCVOAD, to bring the experience unique literacies of artists who work with grief, memorial design, ritual development, and death to bear on these questions. Prompted by NYCVOAD organizations to develop a concrete toolkit, we worked with Working Group participant Adriene Jenik to adapt her practice into an open call for artists and ‘grief prompt’ authors to populate what would become the Artists’ Grief Deck.
As project producer, ALI raised project funding, commissioned artists through an international open call, forged organizational partnerships to shore up support and ensure the decks would get into the hands of those in need, and co-curated - with Creative Producer Adriene Jenik - the image and grief prompt selection as well as the design of the printed deck. ALI is now distributing and administering the Grief Deck project, while working on a Spanish language translation, and a series of expansions of the project to respond to the ever-growing pandemic disaster.
The deck is a set of 60 medium format ‘flashcards’ that are individually designed by artists, sometimes in collaboration with grief workers. One side displays an original artwork, created by artists from around the world responding to our open call, and on the reverse is a ‘grieving prompt.’ These are memorial and processual actions that give the individual something to do – a gesture, a tiny performance, a movement, an act of mindfulness – in memoriam for someone or something whose loss they are grieving. As a toolkit, the decks have been disbursed for free to grief workers and community organizations
In addition to the printed deck, the Grief Deck project includes the free companion website, Griefdeck.com, where new artwork and prompts can be added to the repository of resources on an ongoing basis.