The meditation offered open-ended prompts, like asking subjects to imagine how their loved one would feel about being selected for the project. Piechocki said participants were recruited via social media, personal networks, and even off the street, from among passersby of the gallery space, where the videotaping took place.Įach subject sat alone in a small, black-curtained chamber, listening to a guided meditation while looking at an image of their loved one projected directly above the camera. “People We Love” was curated by Pittsburgh-based public-art consultant Renee Piechocki, who worked with Monkman on the 2014 installation “Congregation,” in Market Square. The project is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP), in part as an effort to activate a long-vacant storefront, formerly a state-owned Fine Wines and Good Spirits store.

The portraits, which run a few minutes each, are visible up-close during gallery hours and round-the-clock through the plate-glass windows from Friday through June 5. “And I think the point of it all, really, is it’s impossible not to wonder who it is they’re looking at.” “You meet the gaze of these faces looking out, and they’re looking with this kind of profound love at you, essentially,” said Monkman, who was in Pittsburgh for Friday’s opening of the exhibit. Many simply stare off, seemingly lost in thought. Viewers never see the photos of the loved ones – only the faces of the unnamed subjects, who peer straight back out from the screen. Each screen offers a series of video portraits of people looking at photos of people they love, whether living or dead. It consists of seven high-definition screens mounted in a Smithfield Street storefront of One Oxford Centre. premiere of a work by internationally known British artist Kit Monkman.

If the answers might be found written on a face, a new public artwork in Downtown Pittsburgh makes them legible.

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