Artists selected for the Covid memorial

ArtsFairfax and the Fairfax County Arts Committee have selected the artists to design the county’s Covid memorial.

The structure – to be created by the team of Miriam Gusevich and Salvatore Pirrone – will serve as a permanent memorial to the victims of Covid-19 and will recognize the heroic efforts of healthcare providers, first responders, nonprofits, and others who worked to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in Fairfax County.

The Board of Supervisors approved the development of a Covid memorial in May 2022. It will be located in front of the Herrity Building and Public Safety Headquarters at 12055 Government Center Parkway in Fairfax. The board budgeted $200,000 for the project.

Gusevich and Pirrone will create a monument, titled Circles of Memory, consisting of a 27-foot-tall hollow cone divided by a break in the center and topped with an oculus from which to view the sky.

The memorial will be a contemplative space inviting visitors to sit inside the structure and on surrounding benches.

Gusevich is a Cuban American environmental artist, architect, scholar, and educator. Her built memorial projects include the Jane Addams Memorial (with Louise Bourgeois) and the Cancer Survivors’ Garden in Grant Park (with Julie Gross), both in Chicago.

Remember Sambir, a Holocaust memorial site in western Ukraine that she began with Peter Miles, is under construction and is on hold because of the war.

Recent international commissions include Zenicka Kilim in Bosnia Herzegovina (2019) and two memorial master plans in Kyiv, Ukraine: Constellations, a memorial for Euro-Maidan (2015) and Yahrzeit Candles, a memorial for the victims of Babyn Yar (2016).

Gusevich, a Washington, D.C., resident, was a tenured professor at the Catholic University of America from 2000 to 2020.

Related story: Fairfax County plans Covid memorial

Pirrone has exhibited regionally at the Arlington Arts Center, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Cultural DC’s Mobile Art Gallery, Sandy Spring Museum, Transformer, Arlington Project for Affordable Housing, Maryland Art Place, Hillyer Gallery, and the Dittmar House at Marymount University.

A resident of Upper Marlboro, Md., Pirrone is a tenured associate professor of design and art at Marymount University in Arlington. 

“Art does not cure, yet it can help us heal. Creativity can offer renewal; through it, we can nurture faith in the future,” Gusevich says.

“We hope to provide an environment that will bring people together,” Pirrone says. “The memorial strives to be a place of reverence for the lives lost and the people who honor them.”

“We need memorial spaces and artworks to help us appreciate the bonds we share as human beings,” says ArtsFairfax President Linda Sullivan. “With such artworks, engagement invites us to learn from our pain and redouble our efforts to lift up each other every day, not just in emergencies.” 

The monument will require several months to complete. The project team will reach out to the public at various junctures where community members can meet the artists, engage with the artwork concepts, and share experiences.