, Palestine, and Ukraine. Our world is awash in grief. The great betrayal, however, is not the staggering losses themselves—it is that most of these tragedies were preventable. They were not foregone conclusions. They stem from politicians’ exploitation of a virus, from men’s valorization of violence, and from elites’ simultaneous normalization of mass suffering and denial of culpability.
Despite her success, Phingbodhipakkiya’s path to artist was uncertain. Though art was her first love, her immigrant parents had wanted her to be a doctor. To stall, Phingbodhipakkiya pursued neuroscience and hoped she could eventually find a path to art. While working at a lab, she convinced her principal investigator that to recruit more research subjects, they needed better flyers—thus, they should pay for her to take a graphic design course.
In recalling these rituals, Phingbodhipakkiya finally pinpointed their power. “They were meaningful because we did it together, because ritual is about bearing witness to each other’s hopes and dreams,” she says. As a child, she had been buoyed by their power; could she now re-create and share that magic? Against the magnitude of collective grief today, might these rituals have something to offer?On a sunny spring afternoon, I make my way to the Upper West Side.