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Exhibit: Remembering 9-11

2011

Remembering 9-11

Curator's Statement: 10 years have passed since September 11, 2001. Each of us has our own feelings and memories of that day. We all can recall with crystal clarity exactly what we were doing when we saw or heard the news. It is another “freeze frame” moment in our lives, something that will always be remembered, right up till the day we die.

When it happened, I felt so profoundly saddened that I needed to do something with my grief. This show was born out of my desire to give myself and a select group of artists the opportunity to experience some of the artists’ feelings, but get in touch with their own feelings as well. Art has the power to change the way we think, for the artists who create it and for the people who view it. Art can bring understanding. But can we ever really understand what took place on September 11, 2001? Are the events still too powerful, too unreal, too horrific and too overwhelmingly sorrowful to ever get a real grasp on them? How do we deal with this overpowering hurt? After all the media explanations, the documentaries, the full color magazine stories, I still struggle to understand.

When I think of the 2,976 people from 83 countries who died that day and the countless number of injured who live in pain everyday, struggling to heal, physically and emotionally so they can resume their daily lives, my heart aches once again. It took seven years to build the World Trade Center, but only an hour and forty-five minutes to completely destroy the landmarks, changing forever a skyline that identified New York as New York. Heroes were born, millions of lives were changed and none of us would ever look at a fireman or a policeman in the same way again without thinking how they risk their lives to save others.

I can only hope that this exhibit will, in some way, enable us to understand the turbulent time in which we live and the people with whom we share our planet. This show is so small in comparison to the event that spawned it. It is our humble offering and tribute to the heroes, the injured and those who lost their lives.

Karen LeCocq