Mean. Equity.
All Day, Ernest Verrett & Anjali Deshmukh/Street Works/MJN
In 2024, “Rising. Curtains.” invited passersby to join in the locally loved craft of community beading, an ancient, global tradition to reflect on the story of climate change and collectively design the unwritten future.
The “original” of the curtain tells the story of time as we know it, in the form of a glittering curtain made of over 12,000 glass and stone beads mapping global surface temperatures in comparison to the average from 1890-present. In 2025, a second curtain made of 12,000 beads weaves in the story of wealth inequality over the same time period, thanks to the amazing help of Stella Muti from the World Inequality Database. From the inside and outside, “front” and “back,” time moves in different directions.
Read here for what we've learned beading hundreds of data strands.
This work is not finished without the audience. Interspersed throughout are camouflaged words, sequenced in vertical and horizontal poems that participants use throughout the day to add to the installation, and make a bead bracelet to take with them. No word is repeated. (Ask us if you want to know what the poems were!)
We’ve organized community beading on the streets of Queens since 2023. Across age, people have told us it’s calming, brings focus, and sparks creativity and community connection. As a part of rituals of continuity, community beading is also simple form of fashion that is affordable and often starts a flow gift giving, within families and among strangers.
Our goal overtime is to collectively create the curtain, reuse the same beads to create different patterns, and collectively design the beads themselves in a growing bead library that helps us and our communities adorn themselves in the art we make together.
2024: Rising Curtains
