Elena del Rivero at Corcoran

Elena del Rivero, [Swi:t] Home: A Chant, 2001–2006, installation of found papers mended, burnt, embroidered, and stitched to five rolls of muslin. Courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the artist. (c) Elena del Rivero

You have got to go see this installation by Elena del Rivero in the Corcoran's rotunda room. Gorgeous.

When the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, Del Rivero’s living and working space—located just across the street from the towers—was also a casualty. Returning home to find her windows blown out and every surface covered with ash and debris, the artist began the process of making sense of an event that had, in an instant, supplanted the memories made and recorded there during the previous year. Over the next five years, Del Rivero painstakingly collected, catalogued, and, ultimately stitched together the bits of paper and debris that she found in her apartment. The result is a majestic curtain of sewn paper, more than 500 feet long. Installed in the Corcoran’s rotunda through November 16, the work cascades from the ceiling onto the floor—at once dramatic and humble, mournful and reparative. Like [Swi:t] Home, it speaks to the complex intermingling of daily routine and chance events, and the ways in which life intersects with art.