“How Do We Memorialize the Pandemic?”
The Boston Globe | May 10, 2021

We were invited to submit a design proposal for a public memorial to The Boston Globe to commemorate the 1M US Covid-19 deaths.

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphics/2022/05/covid-memorial/nilou-moochhala/

The founding concept of this installation is based on ‘light” pillars. These serve as a reference to ancient burial practices that commemorated dead through structures built above ground (e.g. Egyptian pyramids, Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, etc), and the use of light which is used in many remembrance practices worldwide. These ‘lit-up’ altars will use light as a metaphor for transcendence, and movement from this life to the next.

Each column represents a month in the pandemic. The installation will be created in concentric circles, the first year of the pandemic being the innermost circle of 12 pillars/altars, and moving outwards. The circles also signify 12 points of a clock-face - not only do we observe the passage of time from month to year, but also minutes to seconds as we physically walk through it.

Horizontal ‘day prisms’ laid out vertically within each monthly column are further divided into a 24-hour cycle. Each lit dot/circle point/stone) within these structures symbolizes an individual lost to Covid19. Each day had surges in Covid-19 deaths at diff times and this will be reflected in the way each horizontal ‘day prism’ emanates white light projected from within - brighter when there were more incidents, and lighter/softer when there were less.