This is a sculpture called "Dark Elegy" by the artist Suse Lowenstein, in the back yard of her home in Montauk. It is a memorial to the 259 passengers and crew of Pan Am flight 103 which was blown up by a terrorist in 1988. The artist lost her first-born son in the tragedy, and felt she needed to create a memorial by translating her emotions into human figures. There are one hundred figures here, and in order to make this assemblage she had mothers of some of the people lost, come to her studio and pose for each of the figures. It is a sobering experience to approach this sculpture from a distance, and move closer until you can see the faces and the figures in detail.
5 comments:
Powerful picture and sorrowful too. For me, it seemed to speak to the female body- it's life giving ability and the nurturing involved in growing that life and at the same time it expresses the sorrow and pain of these mother's beloved loss -the sculpture grasps all of that experience for me. It must be even more powerful up close with facial expressions more clear-very touching.
Hi Trace: Thanks so much for your comments. It is an incredibly powerful thing to stand in the presence of all of these figures. It is impossible to imagine what these women all went through.
It was an incredibly powerful art piece, she captured the pain of those women in a way I couldn't believe. Incredible and sad.
Please sign and share the following petition to make Dark Elegy a national monument: http://www.change.org/petitions/national-capital-memorials-advisory-commission-make-dark-elegy-a-national-memorial-to-victims-of-terrorism-in-washington
I read that inside of each statue, is a memento of the victim's.
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