North Kingstown Opens Coronavirus Memorial Project

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI — The North Kingstown Arts Council and local artist Nancy Rafi have officially opened an art installation that honors those who lost their lives to COVID-19.

The COVID-19 memorial project is currently on display at the Old Meeting House lawn on Boone Street and includes garden flags that have the name, age, date of death, and a photo of each resident that died from COVID-19.

"When someone we loved has died, the customary ritual is to gather together and remember them, to honor their lives and their impact on the community, and to embrace each other and share our grief," said Rafi in her opening speech at an unveiling ceremony on Saturday. "But all of our traditional forms of grieving – bringing food, hugging loved ones, gathering as a community – these are things we’ve been told not to do over this past year and a half. And yet they are the very things that people need most when they’ve lost someone they love. These are the rituals we depend upon to help us move through our times of grief."

"I hope that people who are fortunate enough to have not been affected so directly by this pandemic will have the capacity to be compassionate," she continued. "These people who once lived in our town, now represented here by white flags - they meant the world to somebody and if we can’t care about somebody else’s loss, I just think we’ve lost a part of our soul as a community."

The exhibit will be on display through December 1. More information about the project can be found here.