Loss is a normal part of lived experience.

The Grammar of Grief Handbook is a living online resource for people seeking performance practices which can help them work through losses in their lives.

Memorials are typically thought of as stone structures rising above eye level in a public square. The Handbook reimagines bereavement through writing, audio, or physical movement that can be created at home and come out of the body’s unique relationship to grief.

Indira Allegra would like to acknowledge the contribution of Temple Contemporary at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University with participants from the Fabric Workshop Museum and engagements with the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University, and Oxbow School of Art and Artists Residency in 2020 and 2021.

The Grammar of Grief Series began as a commission from the San Francisco Chronicle and is generously hosted by Temple Contemporary at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Invaluable support for the online Handbook from the Minnesota Street Project Adjacent Virtual Residency in San Francisco, California.

Indira Allegra

Indira Allegra’s work explores memorial as a genre and a vital part of the human experience. Allegra re-imagines what a memorial can feel like and how it can function through the practices of performance, sculpture, and installation.

They are the 2019/2020 Burke Prize winner, Fleishhacker Eureka Fellow, and a triennial 2019-2022 Montalvo Art Center Sally and Don Lucas Artist Fellow.

@indiraallegra
indiraallegra.com

Minnesota Street Project Adjacent

Adjacent is a space where art happens online. Collaborating with galleries, creators, and partners around the world, the site showcases virtual talks, live performances, and more.

Adjacent is a direct response to the 2020 pandemic, re-imagining and re-contextualizing the Arts in this new reality. The site is an extension of the Minnesota Street Project’s physical space in San Francisco — breaking boundaries, inspiring curiosity, and championing conversations about the Arts.

minnesotastreetprojectadjacent.com
@minnesotastreetproject

Design and development by @paperbeatsscissors
Handbook maintenance by Shanna Sordahl

Submit

Your loss is worthy of memorial. Your practice of memorial can be a resource for others experiencing the same kind of loss. Look to the website for inspiration, then create your own sound-based, movement or written practice or practice in your environment which comes out of your own experience of grief for others to try.

Submit your own practices and prompts anytime. The Grammar of Grief Handbook selects and publishes new submissions four times a year. The first publication period is November 6 — December 31, 2020. Submit here.

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When you feel like you need to cry but can’t, pour a pot of tea into the smallest cup you have. Keep pouring.

Image Description: Indira holds a clear glass teacup and saucer in their left hand and a matching tea pot in the other, pouring red tinted tea into the cup. The cup is just beginning to overflow, and tea is pooling on the saucer. Indira holds the cup over a white sink and in the background are a white tile countertop with several green plants on it and a dark wooden floor. This image is overlaid onto a video of a close up shot of tea leaves floating in green liquid.

I had a feeling of a cry in my body, but the tears did not come for weeks and weeks. Making tea is a daily practice for me to sit with how I am feeling. I learned from this action that this act of pouring was me pouring myself out in another way.

@indiraallegra

Try this practice in your environment and notice how you feel. Submit a practice which comes out of your own experience of grieving loss in your environment that other people can try.