Monumental Interventions
Thomas J. Price, Reaching Out, 2020, Three Mills, London [photo: Jeff Moore; courtesy of the artist]
The following dossier was first published in ART PAPERS Fall/Winter 2020, Monumental Interventions. It highlights the work of seven artists, in various stages of their careers and hailing from multiple nations, who have interrogated and intervened upon the symbolic and formal language of monuments. Monumental Interventions presents possibilities for a radical reformation of monument traditions. These artists, in concert with many others, have fought—and continue the fight—to transform their public spaces by uncovering suppressed histories, resisting oppression, and telling formerly silenced truths.
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Beverly Buchanan
Beverly Buchanan’s practice referenced southern vernacular architecture to interrogate relationships between Black people, history, and the landscape.
Che Onejoon
Che’s project makes evident how monuments are political tools that can manipulate, erase, uncover, and idealize histories, not just in one’s own country but around the world.
Thomas J. Price
In an attempt to expand the perimeters of classical sculpture, Price creates figurative works of Black men—and in this single case, a Black woman—in bronze and aluminum at various scales.
Paul Ramírez Jonas
In a nation where symbols are often divisive, Paul Ramírez Jonas reveals the potential of appropriating monument aesthetics to bring people together.
Onyedika Chuke
For New York–based multimedia artist Onyedika Chuke, the monument is plastic in form and concept.
Kelly Kristin Jones
Using the camera as a demolition tool, Chicago-based artist Kelly Kristin Jones redacts existing monuments from her photographs, offering the potential for something new in a reclaimed landscape.
Doreen Garner
Garner’s practice represents the body as muscle, fat, sinew, and blood, which bespeak an extreme vulnerability and toe the line between beauty and vulgarity.