October 29th, 2024

The book documents her findings and offers a profound reflection on silence, confession, and the shared human experience.

On Tuesday, Oct 29th at The Ford Foundation, Darren Walker hosted a book party for artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s You Are Not Alone: Angels Listening.

More than 200 guests came to toast the artist and author, including Maynard Monrow, Thelma Golden (Director of Harlem Museum), Valesca Hermes, Colin Cowie, Jeff Sharp, Dr. Samantha Boardman and Aby Rosen, to name a few.

Inspired by Rachel’s acclaimed exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2002, her new book of the same name documents her findings and offers a profound reflection on silence, confession, and the shared human experience.

Rachel dealt with her own struggles of growing up in a house with an alcoholic father. She used the installation to create a safe space where others could unburden themselves of personal trauma.

 

At her popular exhibit at the Venice Biennale, seven bronze angels with mouths taped and surrounded by a confessional box named “La Scatola Catartica”. Visitors were encouraged to write their innermost thoughts, often suppressed due to fear of judgment or inability by inscribing them on ribbons, and depositing these into The Cathartic Box, ringing an awakening bell — a symbol of the angels’ role as silent listeners.

Each day, these new messages were compiled and ironed onto prayer-like mats and dispersed throughout the gardens, allowing future visitors to encounter and share them as part of a shared experience.

 

 

Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Darren Walker, and Samantha Boardman.

 

Published by the esteemed Italian publishing house Mandragora, the book serves as a companion to this experience, sharing the courage of those who entrusted their secrets.

“For me,” Hovnanian believes, “each writing represents a life whose story deserves to be told.” Hovnanian invites readers to contemplate our universal yearning for connection in a world that is often marked by isolation.