Art Basel art fair in Miami is paying tribute to Louisville’s Breonna Taylor with an augmented reality experience that you can also participate in remotely.
Art Basel art fair in Miami, Florida is paying tribute to Louisville’s Breonna Taylor with an augmented reality experience that you can also participate in remotely. Digital curator Lady PheOnix worked with Taylor’s sister, Ju’Niyah Palmer, to create the experience titled “Breonna’s Garden.”
The experience will be installed at Maurice A. Ferré Park from Dec. 1-6. You can also download an app to bring the experience to your home.
“Breonna’s Garden” first premiered at the Tribeca Festival. The experience is revolutionary as a space that puts the digital in the physical and surrounds viewers with some of Breonna’s favorite things, including flowers and butterflies, according to a news release.
The project started when Lady PheOnix connected with Palmer sensing that there was a need for a safe space online where family and friends could mourn and, after some discussion, realizing that there were entire communities that needed a place to process this grief.
“We created ‘Breonna’s Garden’ to honor the life of Breonna Taylor with the intention that it be a peaceful refuge, unencumbered by the weight of the world,” said Lady PheOnix in a release.
Since the birth of the project, it has changed from a mechanism for healing for her family to one that gives that to the nation.
From the release: “It is a sanctuary where her name can be said without negation, and others can share their own stories of grief without fear of judgement. The technology allows people in the garden to record their own messages, which can be heard by the next visitors, effectively creating a chain of vulnerability and hope that helps to heal entire communities.”
Whether in person or via the app, users can enter the virtual garden, which includes a monument to Taylor and a hologram of Palmer. Renderings of flowers hold the messages recorded by each participant.
“Breonna died in a world of violence, but she will live on in peace surrounded by beautiful memories, butterflies, and her favorite things,” said Lady PheOnix in the release.
The artists involved in its creation “volunteered their time.”
In addition to the “Breonna’s Garden” experience, there will be a panel discussion on Dec. 5 from 2-3 p.m. at the Pérez Art Museum, also in Miami, with Lady PheOnix, Alex Kipman (head of Microsoft HoloLens/ and developer of Xbox Kinect), Taylor’s partner Kenneth Walker and producer Joanna Popper (HP’s Global Head of Virtual Reality).
Download the “Breonna’s Garden” app and learn nore at breonnasgarden.com.
This story was originally published by CityBeat’s sister newspaper LEO Weekly.
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This article appears in Nov 24 – Dec 7, 2021.
