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Linda Krause
Twin Towers ("Connais-tu le pays?")
Photo © Drunell Levinson. All rights reserved.
I became involved with the 9/11 quilt project as a means of healing and working through my feelings after the events of that date.
I chose to depict the towers because I wanted to honor the victims of the tragedy and also because they were part of my day-to-day life. I often passed through the WTC to use the Path trains and the subways to and from New Jersey, where I live. I remember when the towers were being built and also have personal memories associated with them in the ensueing years. Since they were now gone, I wanted to recapture them in my quilt as they were prior to the tragic events. My favorite view of the towers was during sunset, when the colors of the sky were reflected in the facades of the buildings. The flowers of course are a memorial to the lives lost on 9/11, and the caption in the banner, "Connais-tu le pays?" is reference to an aria from the opera Mignon by Thomas. The aria is about an individual's longing and love of their homeland and also describes its various attributes. This is analogous to my own feelings for the New York area, which is my home and the place I was born.
I wanted to keep my approach to this project very personal and was careful to omit all nationalistic references to any particular country, including my own; I regard these events to be world events, not occurrences that merely affected the United States.
To appreciate the full impact of these events, I believe it is necessary for Americans to consider the role of their country as it interacts with the rest of the world; to do any less creates a circumscribed and unrealistic perception with regards to its international significance.
Linda Krause
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