Drawing Lethe

2006

public project/installation: canvas, graphite, charcoal, sound composition, with participation of passers-by

performance: the artist lies down on top of the canvas making marks around her body with chunks of charcoal and graphite, with her eyes closed. Passers-by are invited to join the artist in the act of marking the canvas with traces of their presence

Sound

below: excerpts from the sound composition that was part of the public project Drawing Lethe. The sound was heard around the palm trees via speakers placed underground.

Credits

countertenor: Anthony Roth Costanzo

organized by: The Drawing Center, New York

Drawing Lethe was made possible by the generous grant from the Winter Garden Arts

special thanks to the numerous volunteers who helped in the project execution and to River to River Festival staff

Artist Statement

In Drawing Lethe, 2006, I covered with white shroud the vast grounds of the Winter Garden, today part of the World Financial Center, formerly World Trade Center. Winter Garden is situated across from the Ground Zero, where in 2006 the remains of the victims of September 11th attacks were still searched for. Passers-by were invited to silently enter the space of Drawing Lethe, they would lie down with their eyes closed, joining me in the process of marking the canvas with graphite and charcoal. Laying down, one could hear my sound composition, which I created based on the aerial sound recordings from earlier that year. To create the sound I was suspended from the glass ceiling, with my sound recording equipment, able to hear and to record the entire site as one sonic field. The site of the project became a form of a poetic response through being horizontal, beyond words, towards the immeasurable trauma of those who perished. This ephemeral space of drawing and listening became a form of collective memory. Following the project, each individual roll of muslin fabric was disconnected from the rest of the cloth (9 rolls of canvas were originally sewn together to embrace the entire Winter Garden floor). Today each rolled cloth continues to be carefully preserved.

- Monika Weiss

Essay Excerpt

Weiss crawled slowly in silence across an enormous white muslin canvas punctuated by evenly spaced palm trees drawing around her body with charcoal, leaving traces of her movement and records of her presence. People joined the event, principally a group of women, but other adults and children as well, producing similar outlines. Graphic catharsis conveyed through the multitude of marks demonstrated the validity of participation from the core to the periphery of experience. The fabric became a shroud devoted to those killed by the attacks on September 11, 2001, validating their absence, enabling their memory. A key element of the project was sound — composed by the artist with the participation of the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo — that was emitted through speakers positioned beneath the ground. The unfolding enabled by sound and drawing was described by the artist as ‘a site of trauma [that] became a landscape of drawing and sound.’

- Mark McDonald, in Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021

Exhibition

Monika Weiss-Drawing Lethe, Winter Garden, World Financial Center, New York, 2006, curated by Aimee Good, The Drawing Center, New York as part of River to River Festival

Publications

Monika Weiss-Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, in collaboration with Samuel Lallouz Gallery, 2007

Homo Luden Ludens, LAboral, Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial, Gijon, Spain, 2007

Guy Brett, The Crossing of Innumerable Paths: Essays on Art, Ridinghouse, London, 2019

Sculpture Today IV: ANTI-Monument: Non-traditional Forms of Commemoration, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2020

Monika Weiss-Nirbhaya, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2021

Exhibition Views