More Than 250,000 Are Dead. Why Is There So Little Collective Grief?
The ongoing tragedy has not engendered the same kind of visible mourning as past national tragedies — and it’s harming mental health
In May, artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada began painting a 20,000-square-foot mural of a Queen’s, New York doctor named Ydelfonso Decoo. A pediatrician nearing retirement, Decoo worked on the front lines in New York City this spring and ultimately succumbed to Covid-19.
Rodriguez-Gerada, an internationally acclaimed artist, partnered with SOMOS Community Care, a health network that serves immigrants and other organizations, to create the mural in a parking lot outside The Queens Museum, almost in the shadow of the iconic Unisphere globe from New York’s 1964 World’s Fair.
Called Somos La Luz (We Are The Light), the work is meant to highlight the disproportionate toll the virus was taking on Latino and Black communities and put a human face behind the dizzying numbers of dead, with its mammoth scale representing the unfathomable enormity of this ongoing tragedy.
“It’s not just making something big, just for the sake of it, it’s also because what you’re saying is [this] important enough that it merits it,” says Rodriguez-Gerada.
