Exhibit debates the meaning of public monuments
IN PROTESTS AND HARTFORD EXHIBIT, NEW GENERATIONS REWRITE THE MEANING OF PUBLIC STATUES
In a “normal” year, the removal of more than 100 Confederate monuments might have seemed impossible. Ditto for the downed bronze statues of Christopher Columbus, who is an intrepid hero to many Italian Americans but a willing hand of destruction to many Indigenous people.
Of course, 2020 is like few other years, so here we are — heads spinning on another cultural issue. Arts groups are hoping this swirling soup will produce a hardy meal of social progress, but the same year that has brought such change is also a brutal year for arts organizations and in- person viewing.
Enter the new Real Art Ways exhibition “Statues Also Die,” which assembles 14 artists to reckon with the monuments we’ve inherited and envision future ones as it questions commemorative practices and their manifestations of power.
Four of the artists wage visceral critiques against national monuments to white men, four others center their own bodies in their work, marking how the sculptural language of monuments has been historically denied to women as well as Blacks, Indigenous and other people. And three artists reimagine monuments as roving sites for collaborating and storytelling.
Here’s an edited interview with curator Sarah Fritchey, formerly of Artspace and just beginning a new post at The Narrative Project Communications Group in New Haven:
Q. What’s your overall assessment of the recent controversy over statues in America?
A. So much of this, to me, relates to the concept of inheritance, and how we inherit our past. And we can’t change the past but we can change how it’s rewritten in the present. I think the key takeaway that I gained from doing this work on monuments is thinking about monuments as inheritance ... that new generations over time rewrite the meaning of.
So even though these structures might take on the form of a permanent figure, a permanent obelisk, a permanent building that’s named after someone, it might feel like they’re everlasting. ... That’s ( the installers’) intentions ... to tell a story of a united nation and to tell a story to our relationship to that history. They want us to think about ourselves as having identity and collective memory of our past. ... The show wants to remind us that as new generations are born, we inherit these monuments and we have the ability to rewrite their meaning in our present- day context.
And actually, these monuments don’t have to be permanent; they can be removed.
Q. Do you think the pandemic fueled this movement as people had time to mobilize over, for instance, Black Lives Matter?
A. Yeah, absolutely. The pandemic really made us think about place. It really, in the way we were asked to quarantine, helped us develop relationships to the microcosms that we inhabit — our homes, our backyards, the gardens near us. ... And because so many people were stopped from doing their daily commutes, the city streets have been more available ... for Black Lives Matter protests to occupy. Monuments give us a little bit of context; when you see one, maybe there’s a plaque, maybe there’s an engraving on the side of the statue. But it doesn’t really ever tell a very long, well- developed story. So you are responsible for doing the work to find out what it’s meaning is, but also the additional work ... to see the speeches that were made around the erection of this monument. Because there lies the intention behind their investment and development.
Q. It gets very confusing for people like me who were brought up on, say, Columbus being an icon and now he’s not. Are you saying it’s good to open it all up for debate and consider why we’re honoring a person?
A. If we’re thinking specifically about figurative monuments ( as opposed to obelisks, arches or buildings) as this show does, it’s true what you’re saying. These were people in their day and age, and like all people, we are multifarious. We do great things that help people; we do terrible things that hurt people. So human beings are complex and the show doesn’t offer a solution but I think it wants us to think a little bit more of how monuments that exist can be told with a more textured story, that show the complexities of human behavior, that allows for the good along with the bad.”
Q. We have photos and video and murals these days to memorialize and commemorate. Are monuments archaic?
A. Two things. Each monument has its own context; we see hundreds of Columbus monuments and you can track back when they were built. Some of them were coming out of postReconstruction era rebuilding, which was really trying to assert itself as the new paradigm of industrialization. You had the City Beautiful movement, an urban- design movement, coming like five years after the Civil War ended. ( It said) “Let’s create a uniform, whitewashed, gleaming city that encourages people to move into our towns and to rebuild.” So Confederate monuments come out of that movement and they borrow from the neoClassical tradition of Europe, as do a lot of Columbus monuments because there’s a desire for more patriotism.
One thing that was really interesting to learn about was this idea that the way that we actually build a memory as human beings is by subscribing as members of a group — religious, family, friendship, hobbyist. ... Things that give you a sense of belonging help our brain have a collective memory to a past that we didn’t even experience. So when we ask ourselves, “Who are these random people we see around our towns and why did someone pay money to have their ( statue put) there,” it’s because it has given some membership group agency to feel more connected to that place and a longer lineage.
Q. If monuments are relative, does that mean that red states can put up statues of President Trump or should that be debated?
A. The concept of design justice is still pretty new to a lot of people. ... This moment is a time when people are starting, for the first time, to really hear about design justice and hear about the way that citizens, residents, can participate in local governments and decision- making on what appears in their communities, which is really exciting. I think the artist in this show that really represents design justice is Monument Lab ( who did a similar Paper Monument Project in New Orleans). ... They have a giant data report ( of citizen input). And really for them this project was about storytelling, which is what this exhibition is about. And that’s what I would say another one of my major takeaways is: How do we think about national monuments and scale down to the local. ... There’s so much value in that. ... We have an open call that invites anyone to imagine a monument for their hometown.
The show offers options, one of them being Nick Cave’s “Augment,” which is this giant monument to joy. ... He wanted to move the dial forward for a parent ( of gun violence). She wanted to think positively and, for a minute, away from a space of mourning and toward a space of gathering around joy. So he designed this 52,000- square- foot, inflatable sculpture that’s made up of handsewn lawn ornaments ... that was carried on trucks through a parade with artists and hundreds of people down to the south side of Boston, where it was installed in a vacant bank building. ... So this is a sculpture that’s temporary, it’s lightweight, it just traveled from Dorchester to Real Art Ways in my tiny Prius.
Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford, Thursday to Saturday from 11 a. m. to 3 p. m. or by appointment. Admission $ 8-$ 11. RealArtWays. org