Making Monuments

DAVID ADJAYE’S POWERFUL MEMORIAL HONOURS A VICTIM OF POLICE VIOLENCE

In a London neighbourhood, David Adjaye immortalizes a complicated past

On September 28, 1985, Metropolitan Police entered the home of Dorothy “Cherry” Groce, a Black mother of six, in London’s Brixton neighbourhood and subsequently shot her in the shoulder. Protests broke out immediately following the attack, which left the 37-year-old paralyzed from the chest down. Groce died in 2011 of health issues that resulted from her injury. It’s this personal and political history — of her perseverance and the community’s activism in the face of injustice — that David Adjaye’s monolithic Cherry Groce Memorial Pavilion honours and continues into the future.

Grounded by a thickset tiered triangular base with integrated seating and inscribed with a dedication, the folly-like edifice is given prominence in Windrush Square by the monumental pillar that rises from a single side. From it, a heroic cantilevered canopy floats above, a deft feat of engineering that captures Groce’s strength and resolve in the years following her assault. Each face is emblazoned with “In Loving Memory of Cherry Groce” as a testament to her legacy.

Commissioned by the Cherry Groce Foundation in 2020, the completed structure has taken on added significance following the worldwide protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright and many other unarmed Black people at the hands of police in the U.S. It counters — if not reimagines — the role of such infrastructures of memory in circulating colonial myths and revisionist histories.

In this sense, it’s as much an indicator of ongoing violence and a beacon for a community engaging in the process of remembering together as it is an archive of past trauma. “It is my sincere hope,” Adjaye says, “that the restorative justice that is born from the making of this pavilion can help us all learn from, and be better neighbours to, each other.” adjaye.com