Mapping Time marks the passage of three months by lighting a candle each week for every life lost to gun violence in the U.S., culminating in a haunting constellation of 3,500 flames. Above the map, a sage-like goddess of hope presides, her heart a sanctuary where waves, slowed to the rhythm of a heartbeat, offer a moment of refuge amid collective grief.
In this poignant yet forceful investigation of gun culture, Coss examines the notion of the sacred and the convictions embedded within it. The installation fuses arresting visual language with rigorous statistical evidence, shaping an immersive experience that confronts firearm legislation, mortality, and the long path toward restoration. Through layered imagery and meticulously gathered research, the work opens space for reflection and dialogue—navigating the fraught terrain between constitutional entitlement and collective grief, and inviting consideration of responsibility, memory, and repair.
Timeline commemorates lives taken during the span of a 75-day exhibition. A single candle marks every date. Each Sunday, seven flames are kindled together, and the weekly total of gun-violence fatalities in the US is recorded in soot, an ephemeral trace of absence, accumulation, and witness.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The 2nd Amendment interpretation has shifted across generations, fostering uncertainty as well as deep divisions among relatives, neighbors, and colleagues
To extend the conversation, the gallery hosted a public dialogue on individual gun ownership featuring Professor Jay Stansell, whose distinguished legal career includes arguing—and prevailing—in a case before the United States Supreme Court. Guests were encouraged to read Michael Waldman’s The Second Amendment: A Biography in advance to deepen engagement. Written as a biography drives home the reality of this one sentence amendment, it exists as an ever-changing living organism, reinterpreted several times through history.
By entwining narrative, scholarship, and civic exchange, Coss creates an environment that is at once intimate and unflinching—one where loss is acknowledged and the possibility of reconciliation can begin.