We’re all carrying around something that would be better left buried and forgotten — what better way to exorcise them than a literal burial?
French artist Sophie Calle wants New Yorkers to unburden their souls with her new public art project, Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery. Beginning April 29 and for the next 25 years, the Brooklyn cemetery will host a hollow marble obelisk created by the artist, which will act as a sort of spiritual portal: Visitors can write down their darkest secrets on a slip of paper and place it inside, burying it literally and figuratively.
Calle herself will return to the hollow grave to collect the secrets periodically — and because the worst of secrets can’t just be buried, they have to be destroyed, she will also “cremate” the papers.
If you’re brave enough to speak your secret out loud, Calle will be at Green-Wood on opening weekend to hand-write your secret and deposit it into the grave, from noon to 5 p.m.
Green-Wood Cemetery is located at 500 25th St. in Sunset Park. Use the entrance at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue to see “Here Lie the Secrets.” Calle created the obelisk in association with Creative Time, the nonprofit public arts organization that recently freaked you out with a too-real haunted house Doomocracy at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and painted the sky over the East River with lights carried by pigeons in Fly By Night.
