Charcoal is a medium that is difficult to preserve. It leaves beautiful heavy lines on paper, even as it disintegrates between my fingers. When my hands pass over, the sharp definition disappears into splotchy gray. Even though I know this, I can’t help myself from tracing the streaks with my fingers and watching small points of black fall off. Charcoal is very tactile, so when I saw Murder, by Maskelle Lasserre, I was very tempted to touch. A group of crows is called a murder, and this murder consisted of carved wooden crows that were burnt to charcoal. Crows were situated on ceiling corners, sprawled across the floor, and looking out through windows. The way they were falling apart into black dust reminded me of Atta Kim. Atta Kim’s work was shown in the Grain of Emptiness show at the Rubin Museum of Art last year, and one of them was an on site melting Buddha. Kim has said of his work, “It takes four or five days for the ice to disappear but it takes 60 or 70 years for humans. The sculpture shows the cycle of nature. Ice will be water will be air. It is nothing and everything,” I wonder how long the crows will be there. I wonder how long our buildings will stand. What is the life span of meaning? There’s a lot to be said about the impermanence of art and nature and this piece was one of the many in the Swept Away exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design that explored it. Whether it was a happy accident or not, the murder was situated looking out through the windows to a view of the Trump Towers. I thought it was a nice touch.

- Tasnim R.