CEE #69

https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=43c1035893e0d8ecf635c14e6&id=3f388a0a57

I’m just back from LA where I had the pleasure of hanging out with colleagues at USC’s Society of Fellows, and where I also had the opportunity to see the “Monuments” exhibit, jointly presented by the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and The Brick, co-curated by Hamza Walker, Bennett Simpson, and Kara Walker, with Hannah Burstein and Paula Kroll.  The exhibit, which has been extensively covered across media, mixes decommissioned confederate monuments with the work of contemporary artists who are reconfiguring what memorialization, witnessing, and repair could look like. 

In a moment in which the current political leadership is ordering the reinstatement of confederate memorials and the demolition and erasure of installations like “The President’s House:  Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” removed from its site at Market and Sixth Streets and reinstalled last week, it is critical to bring back into view the massive outrage of the summer of 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, that catalyzed many to protest and remove confederate memorials and monuments and other public paeans to white supremacy. 

In addition to Kara Walker’s “Unmanned Drone,” a remix of the statue of confederate general Stonewall Jackson that was removed from its perch in Charlottesville in 2021 and given to the artist, among the most arresting contributions to the exhibit was Jon Henry’s photograph series, “Stranger Fruit.”  This series of portraits, a response to police violence against Black men, represents Black women with their living sons in a pietà position.  I had never seen Henry’s work before, and I was startled by my own visceral response to the grief that is always threatening.  I looked, gasped, and turned away.  It was all too near. 

But then I went back and looked again, buoyed by the sound emanating from Julie Dash’s film “Homegoing” – opera singer Davóne Tines singing “Let it Shine” in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church – and the catch in my throat was replaced with defiance.  The exhibit inspired me to move into March with renewed energy to break these long winters’ grips.  We hope to see you doing the same at one of our events this month!

Deborah A. Thomas

Director, CEE