Public Memory and Art: Opportunities for Depicting COVID-19 Inequities

April 22, 2022

Elizabeth M. Glowacki, Ph.D.

When I think about factors that contribute to mental health, outdoor and community spaces come to mind among others. As a communication scholar, I also consider how and what these spaces are communicating. I have been working with a colleague, Dr. Mary Anne Taylor at Emerson College, to look at how physical space and artifacts can be used to advocate for health equity. 

In the course I teach at Simmons University, Strategic Communications for Health Equity, my students and I discuss the concept of public memory, which refers to the values and experiences that are passed on within a community, decisions about what a society chooses to remember or forget from its past, and artifacts that are used to preserve these memories, events, and people (e.g., memorials, monuments, speeches, holidays). We also consider the roles that visuals and artistic forms of expression can play in representing historically underrepresented, oppressed, and marginalized communities.

Similarly, the work that Dr. Taylor and I do applies this public memory framework to describe how public displays of art and commemorative works can be used to advocate for health and resources. As can be seen below, public art installations can also be used to hold government and corporate institutions accountable for a lack of action and/or injustices that have been committed.  

These images feature mural art produced in Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic. The murals are located throughout Atlanta in such areas as Atlanta’s West End and Cabbagetown. The location of the art, the space it inhabits, and the art itself all point to the racial disparities of COVID-19. As part of a larger grassroots public service campaign organized by Sherri Daye Scott (a filmmaker and journalist) and Atlanta-based artists, Fabian Williams and Dwayne “Dubelyoo” Wright,  artists added face masks to existing murals depicting  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Colin Kaepernick, and a female boxer. Their work was created to critique inadequate messaging and a mismanagement of COVID health interventions that led to further health disparities in Black communities. 

“Field of Light” by Bruce Munro in Wiltshire England, features an installation of 1,000 lights intended to represent lives lost to COVID. The display of light captures an energy that the audience can feel while standing among the lights and executes a daunting task—through a striking visual experience, commemorates individual experiences of trauma and grief, that are simultaneously nuanced with a heightened sense of “what’s next".

Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s white-flag display, which was intended to represent the souls of the lives lost to COVID and to serve as a wake-up call for those unaware of how racism and other forms of systemic discrimination can manifest themselves in health outcomes. Memorials such as these seek to challenge a status quo establishment.  

Art can be a powerful tool for advocating for rights and it is important that community members are empowered to tell their own stories and depict what health equity and social justice means to them.  

Elizabeth Glowacki (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a faculty member at Northeastern University and at Simmons University. She teaches courses on health communication, health campaigns, and interpersonal communication. Her research is focused on message design, patient-provider communication, and health advocacy. She is affiliated with the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern.