New York-based artist Elena del Rivero’s [Swi:t] Home: A CHANT (2001-2006) in the lobby gallery commemorates the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy on September 11, 2001.

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Del Rivero lived and worked on Cedar Street, directly across from the World Trade Center. In the aftermath of the event and as a result of the sheer force of destruction, her space was filled with ashes, dust and debris. She was in her native Spain on the day of the terrorist attacks, but when she returned home, she began the task of carefully salvaging and cataloging the office memos, personal notes and other documents that had blown through the collapsed windows of her loft.

Over the course of five years, these scraps were gradually and meticulously cleaned, inventoried, removed of personal identity and then hand sewn on to rolls of fabric. Strung from the ceiling of the New Museum’s lobby gallery in a cascading form, these lengths of cotton flow like waterfalls or clouds of smoke, turning the installation into a powerful evocation of the event itself, its historical weight, and the individual lives affected by it.

Immersed in the intricacies of the installation, viewers will see 3,136 pieces of found burned papers carefully stitched to cotton mesh, amounting to more than 500 feet of material.
It is the first New York City presentation of this work. The piece was installed previously at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 2008 .

In conjunction with her project, [Swi:t] Home: A CHANT, Elena del Rivero will speak in conversation with fellow New York-based artist Andrea Blum on September 15, at 7 pm. The pair will discuss the making of Del Rivero’s work and the relationship between art and the city after 9/11.