Tender Presence is an extension of Jill Magid’s 2020 Creative Time public art project, Tender, in which Magid distributed 120,000 modified U.S. 1 cent coins into the economy, equivalent to a single $1,200 COVID-19 stimulus check. Each penny, engraved with the phrase “The Body Was Already So Fragile,” is anticipated to circulate for around 40 years, the average length of time a coin remains in rotation. The opening of Tender Presence two years later, amid a legislative and societal push to return to the “new normal,” offers a communal site for reflection on the pandemic and the reality with which many of us are attempting to reconcile: life’s inherent fragility, and the interdependence of all social, financial, and biological health.

The live installation with film and sound is sited within the neoclassical landmark of The Dime, formerly known as the Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburg, a building symbolic of the 19th-century savings bank movement where low-income earners could open an account with a dime. Today, the decommissioned bank sits vacant, reflecting the condition and dissonance between our economic and collective wellbeing.