Exhibited at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, TX. March 2022
24ft x 23ft x 9.5ft
On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Uncertain how long the pandemic would last or how threatening it would be to American citizens, the artist, Ruhee Maknojia, stamped one red flower for every American life lost to the virus from 11th March 2020 to 31st December 2021. The Stamped flowers symbolically illustrate human fragility. Eventually the data collection process transformed into an art installation titled, “One Flower | One Life”
The installation of parchment paper hanging from the ceiling to floor was first exhibited at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, TX. The paper displays flowers for every American life lost to COVID-19 and a date marking the number of individuals who passed on a particular day. The project is here to help viewers grapple with the magnitude of lives lost by visualizing over 900,000 of them as small stamped flowers and what that might mean for those who experience the installation. Due to size constraints of the exhibition space. The installation and following images only show a small fraction of COVID-19 deaths. Viewers are currently looking at those lives lost from 11th March 2020 to 24th July 2020, totaling 137,678 flowers | lives.
