The Monument, The Monster, and The Maquette
2022
Installation
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
The word monument is derived from the Latin verb monere, meaning “to remind,” “to advise,” and “to warn.” It is from monere that we also get words like demonstrate, to show something; remonstrate, to make a forcefully reproachful protest; and monster. Monsters have functioned allegorically throughout history, often sent from above as a warning to humankind.
I turn to the monument as a way to offer a renewed, transparent conceptual framework through which the dynamics underlying conventional history can be exposed as matters of power and rhetoric rather than mindless observance. The amalgamation of the disparate elements that comprise American Golem can be considered a form of contemporary spolia—the ancient practice in which the architectural spoils of war and conquest were reappropriated into new monumental structures, prominently displayed in the public forum.
American Golem
The sourced sculptures are physically annotated with critical context surrounding their origins and historical trajectories, subverting the millenia-old connotation of spolia as political symbols of both triumph and warning. This technique is adopted to reveal the uncomfortable truths that connect these seemingly distinct fragments beneath their heroic patina.
A wooden bell form used by a foundry that supplied the Southern states with church bells, many of which were eventually melted down to become Confederate cannons, embodies the creature’s torso and recalls the plinths of so many public monuments. Jeffersonian mantelpieces, which would have displayed many of these objects in American living rooms, shape the beast’s legs, referencing the Arch of Janus in Rome and culminating in wooden lion’s feet from furniture sourced from antique stores in the American South.
Behemoth
An inflatable sculpture, Behemoth, invokes the redacted monuments shrouded in black tarps in cities like Charlottesville and Chicago. Perpetually rising and falling, it suggests the ongoing cruelty of deferral and debate around the removal of these monuments, and the desire to preserve them instead of the communities that continue to fight for liberation.
A selection of drawings on layered architectural vellum, depicting various instances of “the monument that was” as a shadow of its resultant form.
