Photo courtesy of ICA Boston

A touring memorial to victims of gun violence, designed in part by Boston architectural firm MASS Design Group, is now open at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Boston Seaport District.

The firm collaborated with conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas and his Songha & Company studio to create the work, plus gun violence prevention organizations Purpose Over Pain and Everytown for Gun Safety. The work was brought to the ICA with help from local nonprofit the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. Thomas is also the sculptor behind Boston’s “Embrace” memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King and local civil rights leaders.

The installation consists of grids of cubbies, shaped into four house-like forms, with many of the 700 cubbies filled with baby shoes, graduation tassels, photographs and other “remembrance objects” contributed by families that have lost a loved one to gun violence. The number of cubbies is a reference to the average weekly number of people killed by a firearm, whether accidents, suicides or murders, when the project was first launched in 2019. According to a June announcement of the work issued by the Boston ICA, that number is now 840 people per week.

“You hear those numbers all the time, but you never tie names to them. I wanted you to see who my son was,” Pamela Bosley, co-founder of Purpose over Pain and mother of Chicago gun violence victim Terrell Bosley, said in a statement.

“Our goal was to communicate the enormity of the epidemic while also honoring the individuals whose lives have been taken,” MASS Design Group Principal Jha D. Amazi said in a statement.

The installation is on view at the ICA through Jan. 20.

“We are honored to host The Gun Violence Memorial Project in Boston and, with our partners across the city, bring together our communities to reflect, remember and respond to the devastating consequences of gun violence,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA.