Adriana Corral & Vincent Valdez, Requiem, 2016-2019, site-specific installation, dates hand carved into drywall, bronze and ash.

Corral and Valdez collaboration at MASS MoCA. A requiem is a mass for the souls of the dead, and here Corral and Valdez have used it to take stock of American History, beginning by asking 243 Americans (a number marking the age of the American Republic in 2019) to each submit a date of personal or historical significance. These dates were burned by Corral, and the ash was used by Valdez to patina a bronze sculpture of an American bald eagle in distress. Each of the collected dates was then laboriously cut and carved directly into the sheetrock wall by Corral, literally scarring the museum with American history, creating both an urn and a time capsule.

-Denise Markonish, Chief Curator at MASS MOCA

Read contributed text here: https://issuu.com/massmoca/docs/requiem
Images Courtesy of MASS MoCA