Healing Together: Pandemic Processing with Artist George Ferrandi

Collectively we went through a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some ways, 2020 feels like it was years ago, yet there are times when I can't believe it's almost 2023! Life since the pandemic certainly seems "back to normal," so why is artist George Ferrandi creating a new exhibition urging us all to stop and grieve those early pandemic days? This blog is about my conversations with George on her show, maybe the sun, and the importance of grieving a collective loss. If you need support on your grief journey, connect with me at Wingate Counseling. Together we will take a pause and honor your unique pandemic experience while embracing the new normal.

maybe the sun

Here's the low down on the show happening now at Open Source gallery in Brooklyn. George Ferrandi's exhibition, maybe the sun is in conjunction with the show we are each other's atmosphere. This exhibition includes sculptures, videos, drawings, and a live event, which is the show's centerpiece. The live event is performed with an audience of seven people, all sitting around a circular table with a moveable mosaic of ceramic tiles on the surface. The participants wear headphones and are guided through the experience. It's kind of a gamified ritual that George has taken to describing as mah-jong meeting guided meditation at a séance. This aim is to create community vessels where stories of strength and pain can be held. George wants her art to create a "kind of rallying point for the stories we tell together."

George on grief

It all sounds cool, right? But why do we need to look back when life feels back to normal? According to George, people need healing through processing grief by sharing their experiences. Something humans have always done, but this time our loss was collective and complex, making it challenging to be vulnerable and hold space. George reflects, "when an entire community or city or country is undergoing the same trauma simultaneously, it's difficult to be there for each other; I can't see you in your grief because I am surrounded by my own."

Through various experiences with her art over the past few years, George has seen how structured rituals help us acknowledge loss rather than pretend nothing has changed. She remembers coming out of Covid restrictions and the awkwardness of reconnecting with close friends. George felt alone around some of her favorite people, not knowing how to act or what was acceptable during the early post-lockdown days. Though it may seem difficult to reflect on tricky times, for George she found it more uncomfortable to "move on" and longed for some acknowledgment. This led her to wonder if other people were also yearning for ritual or a pause.

Humans need ritual

With this thought in mind, George reflected on how humans need the opportunity to grieve collectively after a tragedy. Throughout human history, we've honored loss through memorial services, prayer ceremonies, moments of silence, and the building of monuments or expressions of art to victims and heroes. This human instinct to take pause has been a catalyst for acknowledging shared pain and journeying to recovery. But, the complexities of the pandemic have been so expansive, making the pause more difficult. After the pandemic's toll, we understandably wanted to regain some sense of normalcy. Still, we forgot our emotional needs in a rush to get our old lives back. George sees unprocessed grief as trying to rebuild a house on a damaged foundation, making us more vulnerable to future challenges and less resilient in general.

George's pause

Since George is yearning for us to pause, I cannot help but ask about her pandemic processing and what she learned about herself while exploring these themes. I was honored to be a consultant to George while she was working on the exhibition. Our conversations started about grief in general but ended in more personal reflections about what it means to be human. George reflected that through our conversations, she came to see grief as something we grow around rather than "get through." This distinction created a different picture in her mind of loss, one that she finds more hopeful and comforting. In her work, this distinction is reflected as a tentative optimism about post-pandemic life. A life where George no longer wants to uphold the hierarchy of emotions with the most pleasant ones at the top. Instead, she wants to celebrate, or at least acknowledge, them all as part of her human-ness - including her grief!

If you can't get to Brooklyn for this amazing show, check out George's Ritual for Reconnection to create your own rallying point for healing.