mourning, memory and life itself: the aids quilt and the vietnam veterans’ memorial wall

MOURNING, MEMORY AND LIFE ITSELF: THE AIDS QUILT AND THE

VIETNAM VETERANS’ MEMORIAL WALL†

MAXINE BOROWSKY JUNGE, PhD, ATR, HLM*

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to explore the VietnamVeterans’ Memorial Wall and the AIDS Quilt as art-works which represent and reveal our deepest culturalyearnings of memory and forgetting at the end of thetwentieth century. In this paper, as an art therapist, Iattempt to make the connection between artisticmeaning–making at the individual and personal level,as it springs from and expands into powerful societalconcerns about healing.

A few years ago, a student of mine at LoyolaMarymount University, Valerie Covert, chose as herthesis research project the Vietnam Veterans’ Memo-rial and, in particular, the artifacts left at the wall(Covert, 1996). As the wife of a Vietnam veteran,Valerie is informed and passionate about the treat-ment of returning Vietnam era veterans to a countrythat disdained them as people, who for the first timein America’s history, had lost a war. While not wellknown, artwork and other articles of remembrance areleft by visitors to the Wall. These “offerings” (morethan 40,000 items to date) are collected by the Na-tional Park Service, taken to a secret warehouse, cat-alogued and stored. As I accompanied Valeriethrough her thesis exploration, I became fascinatedthat people felt called to create and bring their ownofferings to the dead. (We have observed this phe-nomenon again, with the offerings left after PrincessDiana’s death). The AIDS Quilt is another central

memorial created in the United States during the lastdecades of this century.

Along with the Women’s Movement, the VietnamWar and the AIDS epidemic are, I believe, the distin-guishing events of the latter half of the twentiethcentury. They represent two markers of what Americameans at this unique historical moment during the lastyears of the twentieth century. It is relevant to me asan art therapist to be exploring the meanings of thesememorials. As I have thought about these phenomenaand read about them, I have come to believe that themourning processes expressed and enacted, and themourning objects of individual and collective mem-ory, can be thought of as metaphors for art therapyprocesses, since as with art therapy, these memorialsembody our deepest sufferings and the intrinsic im-pulse toward creativity that exist paradoxically andsimultaneously within the bounded container of thetherapeutic relationship and the art processes andproduct (Kaufman, 1996).

The art therapist provides art materials, a listeningheart and mind—and a surround in which sufferingcan exist but be contained. Created artwork, its par-ticular intent or direction notwithstanding, representsconsciousness and unconsciousness. And it representsthe creator’s reinterpretation of memory. Boundedwithin the edges of art materials, the concrete artproduct expresses safety and continuity. It speaks ofcontinuity in the face of loss and death; it representsand stands for a life.

* Maxine Borowsky Junge is a Professor in the Department of Marital and Family Therapy (Clinical Art Therapy) at Loyola MarymountUniversity, 7900 Loyola Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045-8217.† A different version of this paper was presented at the American Art Therapy Association Meetings, Milwaukee, WI, November 12–16, 1997.

The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 195–203, 1999Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in the USA. All rights reserved

0197-4556/99/$–see front matter

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Review of the Art Therapy Literature

While much art therapy literature has dealt withloss, grief and trauma, (Johnson, 1987) these studiesseem to fall into two major categories. First are theindividual or group case histories of clients undergo-ing grief from loss, trauma or post-traumatic stresssyndrome who through their involvement in art ther-apy with a sensitive art therapist (often in a workshopsetting) are able to alleviate suffering and lift depres-sion (Anand & Anand, 1997; Case, 1987; Kornreich,1993; McIntyre, 1990; Speert, 1992; Stronach-Bus-chel, 1990; Zambelli, Clark, & de Jong Hodgson,1994; Zambelli, Clark, & Heegaard, 1989).

The second category is art therapy literature ontrauma at the societal level (Berkowitz, 1990; Felber,1993; Golub, 1985; Jones, 1997; McDougall, 1992;Roje, 1994; Sherebrin, 1991). Berkowitz (1990)wrote about art therapy treatment with returning vet-erans of the Vietnam war. Golub (1985) felt that arttherapy was a natural form of expression for “thedevastating anguish surrounding visual memories-. . . because there are no words to describe such ex-treme situations” (p. 286). In 1991, in “Art Therapy ina War Zone,” Sherebrin (1991) describes her workwith Israeli children whose homes had been destroyedin SCUD missile attacks during the Gulf War. Hergoals were the externalization of anger through art-making and the decrease of fearfulness. Felber (1993)described art therapy in Tijuana, Mexico, after thefloods, as a way to ease people’s psychologicaltrauma. Her study concerned an art therapy groupwith mental health workers on the front lines after thetragedy. McDougall (1992) worked with childrenwho survived the Andover, KS, tornado, and Roje(1994) wrote about art therapy with children after the1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Jones (1997) discussedart therapy with Oklahoma City bombing survivors.Franklin (1993) described the AIDS crisis and its artimagery. He persuasively argued the connection be-tween AIDS art and its social context.

A third category of literature emerging is the arttherapy response to urban violence. A precursor ofthis ilk was published by Landgarten, Tasem, Junge,and Watson (1978) in “Art Therapy as a Modality forCrisis Intervention” in which a team did art therapysessions in a public school after the Symbionese Lib-eration Army’s kidnapping of Patti Hearst and theburning of people and houses in their neighborhood inLos Angeles. Virshup, Riley, and Shepherd (1993)wrote of art therapy after the Los Angeles civil unrest.

My own writing in these areas has taken me fromfamily clinical work into the social arena. In 1985, Ipublished “The Book about Daddy Dying: A Preven-tive Art Therapy Technique to Help a Family Dealwith the Death of a Family Member” (Junge, 1985).With two case studies, I described the making of abook in which all the family participates and whichgives expression and concreteness to the dead personas, still, part of the family. In 1989, inSocial Appli-cations of the Arts(Ault, Barlow, Junge, & Moon,1989), I wrote of the “sweeping power of the arts forchange.”The Art Therapist as Social Activist(Junge,Alvarez, Kellogg, & Volker, 1993) describes a clini-cal project in which art therapists worked with Nica-raguan refugees.

An important paper that is relevant to my work isKaufman’s (1996) “Art in Boxes: An Exploration ofMeanings.” Here, through artmaking, a talented arttherapist explores the relationship of art and suffering.The research was based on the loss of Kaufman’schild to AIDS. Through the making of a sculpture, theauthor confronted her own sense of loss and separate-ness and transformed it through art and meaning.Kaufman’s work is very close to the exploration ofmeaning in this paper of the Vietnam Veteran’s Walland the AIDS Quilt: she sees art as a response tosuffering and a container for feelings. She establishesart as having the potential to memorialize and trans-form.

History and Origin of the Vietnam Veterans’Memorial and the AIDS Quilt

After World War I, allied forces determined thatevery fallen soldier should be commemorated individ-ually. Major architects of the time put names on reg-ulation-sized gravestones, or incised them on a mon-ument. In 1924, Sir Edward Luyten constructedarches at Thiepval in France containing 73,367 namesto memorialize those who had died at the battle of theSomme. On the Menen gate which leads out of Ypresin northwest Belgium, there are 54,896 names. (Thehistory of the memorials has been culled from a va-riety of sources including Hawkins, 1993; Ruskin,Herron, & Zemke, 1988; Sturken, 1997; The NAMESProject, 1996.)

Maya Lin, a Chinese-American, who grew up inAthens, OH, and was an undergraduate architecturestudent at Yale, was fascinated with these monumentscommemorating the ordinary lives of soldiers. As asenior design student, together with each member of

196 MAXINE BOROWSKY JUNGE

her senior design seminar, she submitted a design in1980 to the Vietnam Veterans competition—a designshaped by her study of World War I cemeteries.

A Vietnam veteran, Jan Scruggs initiated the de-sign competition through grassroots efforts to build “amemorial to all the guys who served in Vietnam,”(Scruggs, in Hawkins, 1993, p. 753). Criteria for de-signs were that the future monument be nonpoliticaland that it include all who were killed or missing inaction from 1959 to 1975. An eminent jury of eightart experts judged the submissions. Lin designed asimple V-shaped panel with roughly 58,000 namesinscribed in 140 panels. The names, themselves, shedecided, would be the memorial.

Lin’s design contrasted with and functions in op-position to the established methods of remembranceon the Mall in Washington, DC, where the VietnamMemorial would be placed. Previous memorials wereof white marble and included towering shapes, suchas the neighboring Lincoln Memorial and Washingtonmonument. Lin’s wall of names was a minimalistsculpture, an earthwork cut into the sloping earth. TheWall is made of highly polished black granite which,in effect, acts as a mirror. Here the living can seethemselves superimposed upon the names of the dead.The names on the Wall are represented chronologi-cally instead of alphabetically, like a Greek epic, rep-resenting the chronicle of the war.

Although the jury unanimously selected Lin’s de-sign, a firestorm of controversy was ignited. The fo-cus on the controversy, at first, was on the modernistcharacter of the monument itself. But when Lin’sidentity became known, she was not only young (21)and uncredentialed, she was Chinese-American andfemale. She was defined, not as American, but as“other.” “The selection of someone with ‘marginal’cultural status as the primary interpreter of a contro-versial war inevitably complicated matters.” Her de-sign was characterized as passive, as having both afemale and an Asian aesthetic” (Sturken, 1997, p. 54).Lin’s refusal to glorify war led her to an aestheticstatement of pacifism. However, her design also re-flects the war’s violence as the Wall cuts into theearth. Lin said “I wanted to work with the land andnot dominate it. I had an impulse to cut open theearth . . . aninitial violence that in time would heal.The grass would grow back but the cut would remain”(Lin in Sturken, 1997, p. 54). Later, a more traditionalmonument depicting soldiers was added to the Mallarea and recently a monument to women of the Viet-nam War has been established. Both face the Wall.

What was unexpected was the stream of reverentvisitors filing past the black granite wall, often intears. Soon after the dedication of the Memorial, thecontroversy fell away attesting to the power of theWall. Hawkins (1993) writes:

People scrutinize the panels looking for namesfamiliar to them, unable to refrain from touch-ing what they read, and they leave behind them(at the base of the walls or wedged into a seam)flowers, letters, women’s underpants, teddybears, model cars, photographs [even a HarleyDavidson motorcycle]. Lin believed that thenames, themselves, would be the Vietnam Vet-erans’ Memorial, requiring no embellishment.What she did not take into account was thatmourners would try to give to these names thekeepsakes of identity as if to restore to the deadthe intimate worlds they had lost. (p. 755)

Like Jan Scruggs, Cleve Jones’ motivation to namenames, in his innovation of the AIDS Quilt, was thethreat to oblivion of another lost generation, like theVietnam veterans returning to an America intent onforgetting. In November 1985 it was announced thatthe AIDS death toll in San Francisco was 1,000. Itoccurred to Jones that if that many corpses were laidout in a field, people would notice the loss. As it was,“with death hidden behind closed doors . . . wecouldall die without anyone really knowing” (Jones, 1988,p. 3). At the annual march in San Francisco, held inhonor of slain gay politician Harvey Milk, Jonesasked participants to make signs with the names ofsomeone they knew who had died of AIDS. The signswere hung on the facade of the federal building wherethey provided a stunning “wall of memory that, sim-ply by naming names, exposed both private loss andpublic indifference” (Hawkins, 1993, p. 756). Jonesrecalled a patchwork quilt handed down in his family.As American folk art, quilts represent not only familybut America itself. In our national consciousness, theyare connected to nineteenth century sewing bees anda longing for past community, as a symbol of collec-tive, national unity. In 1987, Cleve Jones made thefirst panel for what was to be called the NAMESProject Quilt: “In memory of his best friend, he spray-painted the boldly stenciled name of Marvin Feldmanon a white sheet that measured three feet by six feet,the size of a grave” (Hawkins, 1993, p. 757). Sincethen, families and friends of those who have died andsometimes the dying person himself or herself meet to

197MOURNING, MEMORY AND LIFE ITSELF

create a panel to contribute to the Quilt. At times,someone sewed a panel for a person they had neverknown. Since 1987, 40,000 39 3 69 panels bearing70,000 names, have been sewn into the Quilt and theAIDS Quilt has become the largest ongoing commu-nity arts project in America. In October of 1996, theQuilt equal in size to 54 football fields was shown inits entirety on the National Mall in Washington.Among the visitors were President and Ms. Clintonand Vice President and Ms. Gore. This marked thefirst time in 11 years and the Quilt’s display in Wash-ington five times that a U.S. President or Vice Pres-ident had visited a Quilt display. Other Presidents hadturned away, even left town, in their refusal to ac-knowledge the national tragedy represented by theQuilt. The Quilt on the Washington Mall displays “anew vision of a graveyard—a national cemetery forthose who have died of AIDS” (Hawkins, 1995, p.13).

Naming

Hawkins (1993) writes:

Human beings are alone in imagining their owndeaths. They are also unique in their need toremember the dead and to keep on imaginingthem. Central to this act of memory is the nameof the deceased, that familiar formula of iden-tity by which a person seems to live on after lifeitself is over . . . Sothat the voice may not fail,the names are written down. (p. 753)

To name is to draw a boundary around somethingor someone—to accent individuality, separateness,even within the crowd. The names of the AIDS Quiltand the Vietnam Memorial counter the anonymity oflives lost of these marginalized people. Here, namesexpress private, personal loss and public indifference.Each time the Quilt is displayed, the names are read.The power of the Wall is due to the 58,196 namesinscribed on it as a roll call of the dead. The nameswere read out loud at the dedication ceremony of theWall and on its 10th anniversary. The Wall’s designcreates spaces in which visitors are invited to touchthe names and to see themselves mirrored among thenames.

In the context of AIDS, naming is connected to apotentially huge risk. In the early days of the illness(and unfortunately, still today) there was stigma andanonymity. The acknowledgment that one had the

disease might mean the loss of medical coverage,one’s job, and/or family and friends. Naming wasoften equivalent to coming out of the closet—“an actof both defiance and affirmation . . . a stand againstdiscriminatory practices and an assertion of one’sidentity” (Sturken, 1997, p. 159). A gay psychiatristfriend, also an AIDS doctor and painter, and I havetalked about the impact of hiding of self-image andthe development of personality. Telling the lie andhiding behind the mask, the person feels increasedloneliness, isolation and self-hatred. A recent articleby Pert, Dreber and Ruff (1998) describes researchwhich convincingly correlates the stress of secrecyand being “in the closet” of gay men with a negativecourse of their HIV infection. The AIDS Quilt iscalled “The NAMES Project.” The name representseverything and it represents nothing. It illustrates re-membering as a political act. While the AIDS Quiltincludes many panels for those dead who were notgay, it remains thought of as a largely gay represen-tation. Naming provides relief through telling a his-tory that has been taboo. It embodies the act of bear-ing witness.

The Wall and the Quilt produce a collective bodycount. When the Quilt is shown in the Mall, it sym-bolically includes those typically cast out of Ameri-ca—homosexuals, drug users and the poor. Namingin both memorials is the act of inclusion of the plu-rality—many different individual threads. In their eth-nic diversity, some have seen the names on the Wallas representative the diversity of America itself.

Making Quilt Panels and the ArtifactsLeft at the Wall

The Vietnam Veterans’ Wall of names memorial-izes the dead from a war that many consider lost, or atleast, not won but a war that is over. The panels of theAIDS Quilt reflect a war still ongoing, a disease thatthus far we cannot cure. The Wall’s names mourn thedead. The AIDS Quilt panels personalize and memo-rialize individual liveslived. This difference may ex-plain why so many artifacts of personal and individualmemory and loss are left at the Wall: the need to offerintimate memory objects representing a particular lifefill the names with individual meaning.

The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial is the only sitein Washington where artifacts are left. Brought to theWall are such things as photos, letters, poems, teddybears, dog tags, combat boots and helmets, MIA/POW bracelets, clothes, medals of honor, headbands,


beer cans, plaques, crosses and playing cards. Theywere originally classified as “Lost and Found.” Later,the Park Service realized that they had been left in-tentionally and began to save them.

The Wall is a place to speak to the dead and where,by implication, the dead are present. Many letters leftare addressed to the dead and often reflect the livesthe dead were unable to live. Sturken (1997) describeshow in an act of catharsis

a well-worn watch . . . wasaccompanied by anote explaining that it was being left for a friendwho was always asking what time it was andwho died wearing it. A Vietcong wedding ringwas accompanied by a note reading “I havecarried this ring for 18 years and it’s time forme to lay it down. This boy is not my enemyany longer.” (p. 78)

Artifacts left are symbols of loss, anger, guilt andredemption. They often thank those who “died forus,” or offer apologies to the dead. The ritual ofleaving something behind may provide a transforma-tive process where the long process of healing canbegin.

The majority of objects are left at the Wall anon-ymously. The Park Service, by collecting, catalogingand treating them as precious, transforms them fromindividual artifacts to aesthetic objects of memory;these objects bear witness to pain and suffering. Themanager of the Vietnam Memorial archive writes:

These are no longer objects at the Wall. Theyare communications, icons, possessing a sub-culture of underpinning emotion. They are theproducts of culture in all its complexities-. . . With each object, we are in the presence ofa work of art of individual contemplations. Thething itself does not overwhelm our attentionsince these are objects that are common andexpendable. At the Wall they have becomeunique and irreplaceable and yes, mysterious.(quoted in Sturken, 1997, p. 79)

The NAMES Project of the AIDS Quilt does notrestrict the number of panels that can be made for oneperson. Some panels are made by strangers. Somepeople with AIDS make their own panels before theydie. Often, in the making of a panel, “a community ofconcern,” is formed that did not exist before whenfriends, lovers, family, even strangers may come to-

gether for the making of the quilt panel (Sturken,1997, p. 186). Each panel reflects the question, “Howcan this person be remembered?” The only criteria forthe panel are that it be 39 3 69, the size of a grave andthat it bear the name of the person to be remembered.Otherwise, there is no control of form or content, nonecessity for skill in design or execution. Kitsch, hu-mor and high camp coexist with expressions of rageand sentiment. Playwright Paul Rudnick speaks of thevalue of humor and comedy in confronting the horrorof the epidemic. Susan Seligson writes, “Dr. Kubler-Ross, you forgot a stage: Somewhere between rageand acceptance lies hysteria” (Seligson in Hawkins,1995, p. 12). Fuchs states:

There is extraordinary artistry here, and also acarnival of tackiness. Perhaps that is the mostmoving and at the same time most politicallysuggestive thing about the quilt: the lived tacki-ness, the refusal of so many thousands of quilt-ers to solemnize their losses under the aestheticsof mourning. (Fuchs in Sturken, 1997, p. 193)

Hawkins (1995) notes that:

[In the Quilt there is] the freedom to rememberthe deceased as they were known; to look atdeath and whatever may lie beyond it withoutbenefit of clergy; to tell the complex story ofhow we live now, person by person. The grow-ing dimensions of the Quilt and the fact that itcan barely be contained or even experienced allat once reminds us of all we have lost. But theindividual panels show what the AIDS epi-demic has been powerless to destroy: quirki-ness, sensuality, humor, the bonds of relation-ship, the value of private life, love. (p. 15)

Many panels bear witness to the details of a life.Many function as testimony, quite simply, that thisperson was here. An example is a panel for JamesMeade. Text surrounds the quilted image of a manunder a quilt next to a window:

—Dawn at the window—birds singing—thecats crying to be fed—lingering dreams—thelight in the tree limbs—shaving—putting on abathrobe—the smell of coffee—ironing ashirt—picking out a tie—waking up Harry—feeding the cats—the warmth of a toaster—oat-meal with raisins—cleaning the sink—making


the bed—packing a lunch—remembering asong—riding a bus—the weight of a pocket-watch—telling a joke—listening to Mozart—coworkers complaining and laughing—thebreeze in the grass—bringing flowers to Har-ry—chow mein and fortune cookies—brushingthe cats—four-handed Mozart—folding thewash—watching an old movie on TV—themoon and the fog—drowsing in the armchair—the cleanness of clean sheets—reading in bed—evening prayer—stars and sleeping—dreaming.(Sturken, 1997, pp. 190–191)

The family quilt implies warmth, comfort, conti-nuity and a past. It is linked to nineteenth centurysewing bees and a nostalgia for a feeling of commu-nity which, as critic Daniel Harris (1997) writes, maynever have existed, especially for gays. In the nine-teenth century, when women had little public voiceand could not vote, quilting bees were communitymeetings. Susan B. Anthony made her first speech onwomen’s suffrage at such a gathering. Communal,family quilting promises afuture in which the quiltcan be handed down even though AIDS indicates abreakage in the expected life cycle in which childrenoutlive their parents. Many parents have buried theirchildren with AIDS. Art therapist, Anna Belle Kauf-man, whose son Zack, having been given a taintedblood transfusion at birth, died of AIDS at age 5, tellsthis story of Zack’s panel for the Quilt:

I don’t remember how I found out about makingthe Quilt. I think someone called to tell me thatit would be at UCLA and new panels would beincluded there. I wanted to have it made for thatceremony in 1988.

I invited two friends with young children tohelp. We all did our parts, mostly separately andthen put it together.

My sister had sent Zack a kite for Christmas,but he died before he received it. I thought of akite being up in the sky. I painted sky andclouds and included his actual handprints in theclouds. I made his imprint in the sky.

Zack’s passion was trains, so I knew I had tohave trains. I drew a track all around the edgeand included the stuffed trains made by one ofmy friends for the panel. The train track repre-sents infinity, in that it has no beginning and noend, but simply keeps going.

The name “Zack” is his signature, in hishandwriting. (I felt the panel should have hishandwriting on it.) In my handwriting, I addeddates. I wanted people to know it was a child.

[For the UCLA ceremony] Zack’s father andI brought the panel into a workshop where weput them together to make a square. There wasa panel in the group for another child, a baby.We later met the parents of the baby.

For the ceremony in UCLA’s Pauley Pavil-ion, the families with new panels unfolded thesquares. Then the lights went out. They thoughtit was sabotage. They sent us home and wecame back the next night for the ceremony.

During the ceremony, everybody was weep-ing. But it felt like a community embrace, ex-pressing the pain and knowing you are notalone.

Because we scattered Zack’s ashes, the Quiltis the only place I have to go where I know heis. (Anna Belle Kaufman, personal communica-tion, November 7 and 9, 1997)

In the Face of Death, the ImpulseToward Creativity

The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and the AIDSQuilt depend upon the presence of the image. In Quiltpanels created for the dead and in the individual ob-jects left at the Wall, creativity in the face of deathand numbing grief are expressed. Sturken (1997)writes, “the image, it would seem, remains the mostcompelling of memory objects” (p. 11). The Quilt hasno permanent home, but travels, and can be said toembody within it a location, a site of memory. TheVietnam Veterans’ Memorial in the nation’s capital isthe location of American memory of this war. Thiscreativity evoked in the presence of the dead, is theremarkable attempt not only to remember the dead asa process of remembering and marking the meaningof their lives but to create something from that loss.

For an interesting story of the making of a quiltpanel within the context of art therapy seeKerewsky’s (1997) “The AIDS Memorial Quilt: Per-sonal and Therapeutic Uses.”

The desire to express and share personal experi-ences plays a central role in the creation of the imageas a representation of memory and of meaning. Whenthey create, mourners are making ritual memory ob-jects to bring to the dead. For both the Quilt and theWall, personal mementos of a life are sewn into pan-


els and brought to the Wall. Through their impulse tocreate, mourners give meaning to their own lives. Theact of creation in the face of death is a compelling actof connection between the community of mournersand the community of the dead. Scarry states, “Themaking of an artifact is a social act, for the object(whether an artwork or instead an object of everydayuse) is intended as something that will both enter intoand elicit human responsiveness” (Scarry in Sturken,1997, p. 198).

Panel making for the Quilt and the selection ofartifacts for the Wall are both cathartic and painful.They provide an intense confrontation with grief formourners and a deeply profound creativity that canhelp the artist/mourner begin to heal. As the panel isfinished and sewn into the Quilt, as the intimate ob-ject is left at the Wall, a psychic mourning processcontinues, of hypercathecting, detaching, connectingand letting go. And some form of preliminary closurecan be expressed.

Mourning and Memory: Conversations withthe Dead

Memory forms the fabric of human life, affect-ing everything from the ability to perform sim-ple everyday tasks to the recognition of the Self.Memory establishes life’s continuity. It givesmeaning to the present as each moment is con-stituted by the past. As the means by which weremember who we are, memory provides thevery core of identity. (Sturken, 1997, p. 1)

Even as the memory debates rage in mental healthtoday, we must acknowledge both the fragility and theendurance of memory. As with art therapy, memory isarticulated through the processes of representa-tion—in the image. The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorialand the AIDS Quilt are unusual memory objects inthat they depict two shared national tragedies of thelate twentieth century, representing two markers ofwhat America is at this particular point in history. TheWall and the Quilt are the forms that memory takes.Both create a community of shared loss—a uniquekind of community in the waning years of the twen-tieth century.

The AIDS Quilt and the Vietnam Veterans’ Me-morial Wall createsitesof memory. The memorialsoffer the opportunity for an outpouring of loss andgrief about traumas that have not been previouslysanctioned. Their message is that memory has pur-

pose. To remember is to give consolation to the liv-ing. In these instances, to remember has been to trans-form public opinion in a country intent on forgettingreturning veterans and focused on making invisiblewhat is perceived to be a gay disease. Both memori-als, have “made an assault on official oblivion”(Hawkins, 1993, p. 777). They express the value ofmaking intimate reality public. Author Milan Kun-dera states, “Forgetting is a form of death ever presentwithin life” (quoted in Sturken, 1997, p. 7). The Walland the Quilt have prevented us from engaging in thedeath of forgetting.

When we visit and revisit these memorials whichrepresent vast cemeteries of the lost we reopen ourgrief once again—we open the wound so that it maybleed freely to blend with our tears, to perhaps even-tually heal, although we may bear some scars forever.This process of mourning is at once transformativeand rehabilitative. A wife of a Vietnam veteran said,“If my husband has something on his mind to sortout . . .he’ll go to the wall. He doesn’t care if it’s2 a.m., raining or below zero . . .There is somethingabout the wall—it’s like a magnet (quoted in Sturken,1997, p. 65). Through the ritual of remembrance, theQuilt and the Wall have become places to visit mem-ories, to have a conversation with the dead. But theWall and the Quilt are as much about survival andabout life itself, as they are about mourning.

The transformative and rehabilitative process ofmourning—the ability to return to life—are enactedthrough the creativity of the Quilt panels and throughthe intimate and ritualized memory objects left at theWall. These memory objects have many conflictinginterpretations and are often ultimately mysterious inmeaning. But within the process of mourning, peopleparticipate in giving meaning to the past and thepresent. “The enactment of traumatic memory is im-portant as a healing device and as a tool for redemp-tion” (Sturken, 1997, p. 17).

Memories are created and are a form of interpre-tation. The Quilt and the Wall as forms of collectiveremembering contribute to what Sturken defines as“cultural memory,” or “memory that is shared outsidethe avenue of formal historical discourse” (Sturken,1997, p. 3):

. . . Cultural memory is a means through whichdefinitions of the nation and ‘Americaness’ aresimultaneously established, questioned and re-figured . . . forexample, the Quilt laid out in theMall evokes a sense of America, yet it also


represents those who have been symbolicallyexcluded from America. (p. 13)

The Quilt and the Wall are about a personal cul-tural memory, not about generalization. Throughthem, individuals create cultural memory. The AIDSepidemic and the Vietnam war produced new storiesand radical resistance. These stories confront and in-terrupt the dominant historic narratives of the UnitedStates, those of science and technology, masculinityand American imperialism. The contested histories, ofthe Vietnam war and the AIDS epidemic are still fluidand formative and, still contested. They demandunique forms of commemoration to give presence andvoice for mourning, for memory. The Vietnam Vet-erans’ Memorial and the AIDS Quilt are these uniqueforms.

Sturken (1997) argues for cultural memory as an“inventive social practice” and not a representation oftruth. She writes:

We must rethink culture’s valorization of mem-ory as the equivalent of experience. If memoryis redefined as a social and individual practicethat integrates elements of remembrance, fan-tasy, and invention, then it can shift from theproblematic role of standing for the truth to anew role as an active, engaging practice of cre-ating meaning . . . [It can be] aprocess of en-gaging with the past rather than a means [ofcalling] . . . it up, [and] we will come to under-stand its role in enabling individuals to imbuethe past with value in the present. (p. 259)

Conclusions

The lessons for art therapists from the VietnamVeterans’ Memorial Wall and its artifacts and theAIDS Quilt are many. They focus on the inclusion ofdisenfranchized and marginalized people, and theyremind us of the importance of the ritual of creativity.Creativity in the face of death offers a spectrum oflife-enhancing possibilities. These possibilities canward off a meaningless conclusion to a life, givemeaning and hope to a life lived and to a future inwhich the dead, through memory, still exist. In theVietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall artifacts and theQuilt panels, creativity is not simply about remem-bering the dead. It is an effort to create somethingfrom that loss. The power of the created memory

image remains a talisman and a touchstone. It is botha symbolized ritualistic process and an art productinherently full of meaning. Its power lies in its abilityto portray a life. The art image reminds us of thepersonal complexities of a human life beyond a sur-face.

Further implications for practice are cultural andsystemic. The individual art therapist must recognizethat she and her clients are bound to a cultural mo-ment. They are part of it, and structured by it. It livesin them and is inescapable. Paradoxically, the culturealso changes minute-to-minute. The old mental healthtreatment notions of “adaptationto culture” no longerhold. They have not been effective for a long timenow. The art therapist must reconfigure herself tobecome a change agent whose materials and mediaare not only human life but the culture itself. She muststrive to enhance and “grow” a positive environmentthat will not only sustain but will nurture. This comesabout because of who she is, what she does in theworld and what she helps her clients do.

The art therapist must pay close attention to theselarger community and systemic concerns. The cre-ation of community art projects as exemplified in theVietnam Memorial Wall artifacts and the AIDS Quiltengage people together in the remarkable power ofthe arts for change through the creation of meaning.For example, the Clothesline Project is one in whichpeople, usually women, create shirts intended to por-tray a personal experience of violence and their trans-formation from the victim role to that of survivor. It isalso my hope that the art therapy and creative artstherapies communities can begin to more clearly de-fine themselves to act as arts communities with spe-cial arts skills and a special purpose: to use the arts asagents of change for a world sorely in need in the lastyears of the twentieth century.

Perhaps the most important lesson for art therapistsis about human beings yearning to be part of some-thing bigger than themselves. Coming together withmany others and leaving one’s mark on the whole isboth transformative and transcendental. The processof collaboration whereby one leaves one’s imprintthrough the image, connects the person to the com-munity of others who have undergone the tragic con-sequences of suffering. But through the creation ofmeaning and hope, our common bond, can continueon. In this way, the art therapist and her client becomecocreators, an interconnected community, so to speak,to create an image which weaves a path through


trauma and suffering, which engenders hope andwhich finally may enable life to go on.

As art therapist Steven Levine (1992) writes inPoiesis: “The task of therapy is not to eliminate suf-fering but to give voice to it, to find a form in whichit can be expressed. Expression is itself transforma-tion. This is the message that art brings (p. 14).”

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mourning, memory and life itself: the aids quilt and the vietnam veterans’ memorial wall

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