Art Hounds: Public art installations address historical trauma, mental health
Also the 20th annual Twin Cities Book Festival goes virtual
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Opera singer Jennifer Lien of Duluth, Minn., recently saw Tia Keobounpheng’s public art installation “Unweaving,” in the Sister Cities Park in Duluth. The art consists of four large, bright yellow looms strung with woven fabric. The loose ends of the weaving catch the light and billow in the breeze by the lake. Lien found the installation peaceful and was moved by the purpose behind it.
The work is a meditation on lost family history and past historical trauma that is passed along the generations. Keobounpheng’s grandmother was part of the “Red Exodus,” when thousands of Finnish speakers emigrated from Minnesota and the Lake Superior region to Karelia, Russia, in the 1930s, with the goal of forming a Finnish-speaking utopia.
Many were killed in Stalin’s regime, and those who returned to the U.S. generally did not speak about the experience. In an artist’s statement, Keobounpheng said she designed the installation to explore how communities become “unwoven when we are disconnected from our foundation of ancestral history; i.e. when we don’t know our stories or when truths are suppressed.”
Lien connected personally with the art. As a child and grandchild of immigrants who fled the Japanese invasion and the rise of communism in China, Lien said that the installation “spurred me to think more deeply and to start asking questions about my own family’s historical trauma … and how to unweave those threads in my life through my own particular artistic expression.”
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“Unweaving” runs through October.
Writer Russ Stark recommends seeing the “Rainflower Project,” a public art installation designed to draw attention to mental health and to those who die each year by suicide. Artist Damien Wolf of Plymouth created 675 individual ceramic flowers on steel stems, arranged in a grid on the ground.
The project is steeped in symbolism. Each flower is unique like each person lost to suicide. The leaves form the infinity symbol, meaning that people who die are not forgotten. The colors of the flowers, too, are carefully chosen. White flowers represent remembrance and hope, yellow is light and energy, and black for crisis.
Stark was moved by the effect of the colors together. The few black flowers are surrounded by yellow and white, reminding him of the community needed to support mental health and wellness.
The Rainflower Project is on display in Plymouth through this weekend.
Young adult novelist Lana Wood Johnson is looking forward to attending Rain Taxi’s 20th annual Twin Cities Book Festival, which this year will take place entirely online.
The free festival is a draw for readers and writers alike, with talks and exhibitions by authors and publishers. This year’s lineup of writers features major national names, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar in conversation with Dessa and Kwame Alexander with James Patterson, Kate DiCamillo, and Naomi Shihab Nye among the speakers. Together with local writers, their work spans literature for children and adults. Eight of the events will be interpreted live on-screen in ASL.
The Twin Cities Book Festival runs Thursday through Saturday.
