Chris Saucedo’s sculpture entitled World Trade Center as a Cloud is in memory of the artist’s firefighter brother whose remains were never found.Chris Saucedo’s sculpture entitled World Trade Center as a Cloud is in memory of the artist’s firefighter brother whose remains were never found.

Artist Christopher Saucedo, dressed in black, stood with his hands in his pockets next to his mixed media artwork at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan.

His brother Gregory, a firefighter, died in the line of duty in the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Saucedo’s work is part of an upcoming exhibit, Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11, in which 13 New York City-based artists explore their reactions to the airplane attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people died.

“We thought, there needs to be another way in to remembering, and we realised that art is another way in,” Alice M. Greenwald, director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, said.

“It gives you that immediacy of the emotional truth of that moment, and you see through another person’s eyes and through their artistic practice, how they struggled with the very same emotions that all of us felt.”

The exhibit stands as a counterpoint to the museum’s permanent exhibitions, which tell the story of the September 11 attacks and commemorate those who died with wrenchingly familiar sights as well as artefacts. The art ranges broadly in form, from paintings and sculptures to works on paper and video.

Saucedo, for instance, pressed linen pulp on handmade paper to create World Trade Center as a Cloud, which comprises three panels, each 101cm by 152cm.

Gesture by Manju Shandler is one piece of a 2,996-piece set of the larger work which forms part of the exhibition at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.Gesture by Manju Shandler is one piece of a 2,996-piece set of the larger work which forms part of the exhibition at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

American painter, sculptor Eric Fischl, who lost a friend in the attacks, is displaying a bronze sculpture, Tumbling Woman.

The three founding members of performance art company Blue Man Group made Exhibit 13, a four-minute video of burnt papers, letters, business forms and personal notes that blew from the World Trade Centre into the yard of their rehearsal space in Brooklyn.

Chris Wink, co-founder of the group and original Blue Man, said creating the video was a way of processing the attacks.

“We didn’t know how we could go back to our sort of comedic work given what we were feeling and what was going on,” Wink said.

Wink said the real purpose of the video was to provide people with a gentler, more reflective space that was less alarmist than what people were seeing in the news.

“It’s like each piece of paper represents a different story, a different community, a different system, a different life interrupted,” Wink said, noting that he will be taking his children to the exhibit.

“Memorialising is very important to people directly affected, but, of course, who wasn’t affected indirectly?”

Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11 is the first major special exhibition for the museum. It will open to the public on September 12.

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