"The Embrace" is a different kind of memorial

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English - January 09, 2021 02:00 - 16 minutes - 11.3 MB
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This week, pro-Trump supporters marched through Washington D.C. and stormed the Capitol building, just as Congress was meeting to formally certify the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The insurrection left five people dead and a world in shock. Many are asking, is this what America has become?

The attack also comes the same week that Tucson, Arizona is marking the ten-year anniversary of a shooting rampage outside a supermarket that killed six people and injured thirteen, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The attack took place at a “Congress on the Corner” event, days after Rep. Giffords had won a contentious re-election race.

Today, a permanent memorial to honor the victims and survivors of the Jan. 8, 2011 attack was dedicated in a small ceremony. Rebeca Méndez, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, worked with the architecture firm Chee Salette to design that memorial.

The memorial, called "The Embrace," includes a series of symbols that Méndez and a team of UCLA students created to depict the victims, survivors and first responders, and to tell a larger history of Tucson and southern Arizona.