It Takes a Village

Participatory installation, 80,000-piece jigsaw puzzle

Over a lifetime, a person is estimated to meet around 80,000 people, from fleeting encounters to deep relationships and everything in between. It Takes a Village gives each of those people a physical form. The work is a monumental jigsaw puzzle of 80,000 pieces, one for every person who might cross a single life’s path.

The image in the puzzle is the very first photograph the artist took of their daughter.

Throughout the exhibition, visitors are invited to assemble the puzzle together, piece by piece and stranger by stranger. No one can finish it alone. The picture appears slowly, through the work of many hands, and shows a child’s first portrait being revealed by the community she is born into.

Eighty thousand pieces. One beginning. It takes a village.