Mourning Flowers: Collective Grief in Response to Mass Violence

Mourning Flowers is an art project by conceptual artist, Tanja Hollander that brings awareness to the ripple effects of trauma and fear that communities sustain after acts of violence. It uses the flowers and empty sleeves that once wrapped them left as offerings at spontaneous memorials to bridge the disconnect between violence and the human response to it.

I’m asking for your support for my latest body of work, Mourning Flowers, an expansion of two installations I made at the Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor (Maine MILL) in urgent response to the October 25, 2023 mass shootings in my hometown of Lewiston/Auburn, Maine.
 

-Jan Ramirez, Executive Vice President of Collections & Chief Curator, National September 11 Memorial & Museum
 

The first piece was a photograph of 18 flower bouquets left in situ at the site of the Lewiston shooting–an homage to the 18 people killed. The second, made in collaboration with Deaf multi-media artist Miia Zellner for the year-one commemoration of the loss, is an installation made from the now empty flower sleeves that once wrapped all 261 flower bouquets. The forms are elegiac and ghost-like, evoking the devastation of traumatized communities who suffer the sudden loss of friends, family and community members.
 

I’ve spent the year researching how artists and communities respond to acts of mass violence and engaging members of a working group of international archivists, historians and curators to learn best practices for the collection and care of spontaneous memorials at sites of trauma.
 
 I am currently raising funds to expand this work globally by collecting flowers and sleeves from yearly remembrances to inspire a new creative work. My goal is to secure $50,000, allowing me to travel to six commemorations over the next year for research, collect flowers and sleeves, and produce a large installation.