Artists and art purveyors, whose works appeared in the exhibition "Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress," talked about the motivation and meaning behind their creative endeavors in a series of Gallery Talks in the Jefferson Building this fall.
Helen Zughaib - Yusef El-Amin
Most of them created the art in response to the terrorist attacks, and their artwork represented a wide variety of emotions, from sorrow and anger to tolerance and even humor.
On Oct. 3, Bibi Marti and Jodi Hanel, curators at Exit Art, an alternative art gallery in New York City, talked about the news-making project held at their gallery. Soon after September 11, the Exit Art staff felt a need to serve the community. "Artists were calling and asking what Exit Art was doing. We're the kind of gallery that would have a response," said Marti, assistant curator. "We gave it a lot of thought and decided, ‘Let this place become a vessel of people's feelings.'"
The staff sent out a worldwide appeal by letter and e-mail to artists, gallery patrons and others for creative responses to the terrorist attacks. There was one simple criterion: each work had to be sized 8-by-11 inches.
Hundreds of people, from 2 to 81 years old, responded. In the exhibit from Jan. 26 to April 20, Exit Art displayed 2,443 pieces, hanging from wire string in rows densely suspended across the gallery. The art included drawings, paintings, photographs, poems, collages, letters, digital prints, and graphic designs, expressing a gamut of emotions—grief, fear, anger, hope, patriotism, and even strong antiwar sentiments.
Helga Thomson - Yusef El-Amin
"The show itself became a work of art, a way of mourning together," Marti said. On opening day alone, 3,000 people filed through the exhibit, which was covered by television and the daily newspapers.
The Library's Prints and Photographs Division acquired the entire archives. The Exit Art staff wanted the art to go someplace where it would be carefully preserved and made available to as many people as possible.
The Oct. 23 Gallery Talk featured artists Helen Zughaib, Kitty Caparella and Helga Thomson. Each artist created pieces vastly different from the other, yet they shared the same intensity of passion and dedication.
As an Arab-American with roots in Lebanon, Zughaib said she felt "twice as bad" after September 11. Her artwork, "Prayer Rug for America," brings together her two lines of heritage. The prayer rug is geometrically designed in the colors of the American flag—red, white and blue.
Zughaib, a Washington, D.C., artist, chose the prayer rug as her subject because, as she explained, "in times of tragedy, people look to a higher meaning for solace." She wanted viewers to "come in" and reflect on the tragedy, and to find their own place of comfort.
"Newyorkistan"
Kitty Caparella, a reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News and also an artist who attends the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, created an unusual 3-square-inch art book that unfolds into a swastika to express her anger at the terrorists. Inside the squares that make up the swastika are photos of the terrorists with wounds and blood dripping from their faces.
"After the FBI identified the 19 terrorists, I started drawing squares next to each other. Immediately something clicked. I drew a swastika of squares, figuring I would put the terrorists' mug shots inside. It would be a political statement. Al Qaeda's belief system, like the Nazis, was to annihilate, and I felt they were fascists," said Caparella, who as a reporter had covered extremist groups such as white supremacists, black organized drug crime, and La Cosa Nostra, the mob.
The tiny book has a huge impact. As a closed book, it appears pretty and delightful with a white silk cover, and the first effort to open the book reveals an interior of lovely blue, much like the perfect sky on the morning of September 11. But as the book unfolds, so does the shock of seeing the grim mug shots and the realization that the object is a swastika.
Unlike the others, Helga Thomson, a Maryland artist and printmaker, created her work titled "Towers" before 9/11, in the summer of 2001. Her original intention was to depict conflicts and contrasts between the digital and analog worlds.
Kitty Caparella - Yusef El-Amin
"In the ‘Towers' print, I tried to convey the idea that something high from above, big and powerful, was encroaching over the innocent, small people down below. A sort of danger was looming and approaching," Thomson said.
She did not have a premonition of the attacks, she said. But after the disaster, an art collector looked at Thomson's piece and pointed out, "These are the Twin Towers and those are the people in distress and agony."
"In an instant I could see the 9/11 tragedy, and my print acquired an everlasting new identity," Thomson said.
At the Oct. 24 Gallery Talk, illustrators Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz discussed the cover they created for the New Yorker magazine, which three months after September 11, gave New Yorkers something to laugh about.
The cover featured a map of New York City divided into numerous areas and renamed with Afghanistan-sounding words. For example: Wall Street became the Moolahs, Greenwich Village, the Khouks, and an area of future development, Trumpistan. Other names on the map were Central Parkistan, Khaffeine, Botoxia, Perturbia, Taxistan, Blahniks, Gaymenistan, Yhanks, Khlintunisia and many more. The nearby Connecticut suburbs were dubbed Khakis and Kharkeez.
"When the cover appeared, it's as if a dark cloud seemed to lift. People laughed again," said Kalman, a writer and illustrator of children's books. The timing was fortunate; New Yorkers were ready to see some humor. "If it came out earlier, many would have been infuriated, and if it came out later, no one would have cared," she said.
Illustrators Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz - Yusef El-Amin
The artists said the idea for the cover came about spontaneously during a conversation in a car on the way to a party. Because the United States had just started bombing Afghanistan, Meyerowitz and Kalman were discussing Afghan tribalism and the names of the Afghan tribes.
Enjoying the sound of the Afghan names, the artists applied them to New York City, which they felt had its own fair share of tribes. "We were just having fun," Meyerowitz said.
The New Yorker Magazine liked it so much it featured the map on its Dec. 10, 2001, front cover, instead of the back page where it was originally intended to run. The public's favorable response persuaded the magazine to sell copies of its cover in poster form.
"The popularity of the image still amazes us," said Meyerowitz.
