Heim Center for Cultural and Civic Engagement
Parkway Central Library
The Free Library of Philadelphia
November 7-December 13, 2025
At This Table: A Monument Lab Residency Exhibition marks the culmination of the 2025 Monument Lab Residency, presenting new monumental prototypes by Philadelphia-based artists-in-residence Nazeer Sabree and Levester Williams. The exhibition’s title, drawn from Joy Harjo’s poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” centers the kitchen table as a site of gathering and exchange, where we come to understand who we are and how we connect to one another.
Working through different methods and mediums with Monument Lab collaborators and community partners, both artists’ prototypes converge on inheritance—illuminating how memory and material pass from one generation to the next, how presence and absence at this space of gathering shape our identities, our communities, and our understanding of the world. Their prototypes celebrate the possibilities of what a monument can be: at once deeply personal and powerfully collective, rooted in place while reaching toward wider conversations about identity, community, and care.
This exhibition invites audiences to consider the kitchen table not only as a site of nourishment but also as a monument in its own right. Visitors are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences of gathering, remembering, and imagining new futures together.
Lead support for the Monument Lab Artist Residency is provided by the William Penn Foundation, with additional support from Urban Art Projects (UAP) and the Ogilvie Family Foundation. Programmatic partners include OURchive and the Free Library of Philadelphia Exhibitions.
Curator: Aubree Penney
Program Director: Gina Ciralli
Project Manager: Alex Chung Vargo
Photos courtesy of Steve Weinik/Monument Lab, 2025.
Monument Lab, An American Reflection, 2025
Digital video
MONUMENTS
MOCA Geffen & The Brick
Los Angeles, CA
November 7-December 13, 2025
In the midst of the United States’ monumental reckoning and reimagining, Monument Lab compiled the first-ever National Monument Audit (2021). To produce the Audit, our research team spent a year scouring almost half a million records of historic properties created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources. We looked for conventional monuments—statues or monoliths constructed with stone or metal, installed or maintained in a public space. For Monument Lab’s deepest investigations, we focused on a study set of approximately 50,000 conventional monuments representing data collected from every US state and territory. This landmark study has been cited by numerous federal, state, local, institutional, and grassroots organizations as a transformative way of understanding and reimagining our inherited monument landscape.
For the MONUMENTS exhibition, Monument Lab revisited the Audit to produce an original artwork—a newly commissioned single-channel digital work powered by a series of data cloud visualizations that reconsiders what it means to map the country’s monument landscape. Each dot in An American Reflection represents a conventional monument contained within the Audit (48,178 in total). Together, these monuments are depicted as a massive constellation of stars, guiding us in decoding monumental meanings and myths. An American Reflection reveals this country’s monuments as an interconnected collection of public symbols rather than as solitary landmarks that, when taken together, disproportionately elevate the Lost Cause above Emancipation and Civil Rights more broadly. As Monument Lab reminds, “There is still work to be done together—to engage with monumental erasures and lies, and move toward a monument landscape that better acknowledges a fuller history of our country.”
Philadelphia, PA
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July 2025
Edited by Monument Lab Senior Curator Yolanda Wisher in partnership with the Emmett Till Interpretive Center’s Daphne R. Chamberlain and Patrick Weems, the second issue of Bulletin delves into the theme of “Reverence.” The issue’s release coincides with the 70th anniversary of Emmett Till’s lynching and Mamie Till-Mobley’s courageous acts of bearing witness in publicly mourning her son that spurred the Civil Rights Movement. As Till and Till-Mobley’s lives are enshrined in emergent monuments across the country, Bulletin captures the long-in-the-making moment of becoming and reflection. While tracing a lineage of struggle and activism for equal rights in the Mississippi Delta and beyond, the publication explores reverence as an act of beholding and belonging.
Featuring contributions by The Alluvial Collective, Tony Bolden, Adrienne Brown-David, Daphne R. Chamberlain, Gloria Dickerson, W. Ralph Eubanks, Paul M. Farber, Justin Hardiman, Jerome G. Little, Dick Lourie, Yannick Lowery, Airea D. Matthews, C. Liegh McInnis, January Gill O’Neil, Mark Palacio, Theo Palacio, Aubree Penney, Olivia C. Riley, Sonia Sanchez, Sabrina Santiago, Omar Tate, Wright Thompson, Natasha Trethewey, The Tyler Twins, Ashley Tyner, Elliot Waters-Fleming, Patrick Weems, Steve Weinik, Reverend Willie Williams, and Yolanda Wisher.
Major support for Bulletin is provided by the Mellon Foundation.
Photo courtesy of Steve Weinik/Monument Lab, 2025.
Eds. Iris Rajanayagam & Ohiniko Mawussé Toffa
Bonn, Germany
June 24, 2025
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To what extent can documenting, archiving, and making marginalized (historical) knowledge available open up spaces in which new ideas can be conceived and decolonial options can be discussed in the memory-political landscape of Germany and beyond? What forms can the transmission and documentation of marginalized knowledge take? How can this knowledge help to confront systems of inequality and unequal treatment, to challenge colonially transmitted narratives, and to create alternative spaces for thought and action?
These questions were the focus of the symposium "Transformative Archives: Approaches and Perspectives for (Historical-)Political Education," held in 2022 in cooperation with the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig. Overall, the event encouraged reflection on knowledge production and transfer within marginalized communities, as well as the influence of this knowledge on educational policy concepts and practices. At a transnational level, the symposium explored ways in which so-called transformative archives can illuminate hegemonic narratives and historiographies, and considered their implications for (historical-)political education.
Featuring contributions from guests invited to the symposium, this volume offers insights into the expertise presented and the collaborative discussions. The publication thus also contributes to the dissemination of marginalized knowledge and facilitates a deeper engagement with the topic.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
May 5, 2025
5:30-7:00 p.m. EST
SAAM has partnered with Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio based in Philadelphia, for an engaging series of guided conversations about The Shape of Power exhibition. In each of the three events, Monument Lab curators Yolanda Wisher and Aubree Penney will focus on specific artworks to illustrate ideas and spark dialogue. This program examines the interplay between representations of people, gods, and monsters. Monument Lab will provide a toolkit for creative ways of looking at art and generating conversation around the exhibition. Space is limited.
Image credit: Rina Banerjee, In Mute Witness..., 2015/2023, wooden spindles, aluminum cloth, waxed nylon, wood, steel armature, Murano glass horns, rooster feather, porcupine quill, silk tassel, cowry shell, hemp cord, silkscreen print silk cloth, cotton thread, acrylic paint, tribal jewelry, abacá fibers, and gourd, Courtesy of the artist.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
April 10, 2025
5:30-7:00 p.m. EST
SAAM has partnered with Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio based in Philadelphia, for an engaging series of guided conversations about The Shape of Power exhibition. In each of the three events, Monument Lab curators Yolanda Wisher and Aubree Penney will focus on specific artworks to illustrate ideas and spark dialogue. This program will unravel the intersections of race, culture, and identity as reflected in the power of hair to shape our perceptions of style, beauty, and resistance. Monument Lab will provide a toolkit for creative ways of looking at art and generating conversation around the exhibition. Space is limited.
Image credit: Edmonia Lewis, Hagar, 1875, carved marble, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., 1983.95.178
Smithsonian American Art Museum
March 6, 2025
5:30-7:00 p.m. EST
SAAM has partnered with Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio based in Philadelphia, for an engaging series of guided conversations about The Shape of Power exhibition. In each of the three events, Monument Lab curators Yolanda Wisher and Aubree Penney will focus on specific artworks to illustrate ideas and spark dialogue. This program will feature a discussion of how attitudes and understandings about race in the United States have influenced monument-making. Monument Lab will provide a toolkit for creative ways of looking at art and generating conversation around the exhibition. Space is limited.
Register here.
Image credit: Nicholas Galanin, The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole), 2016, wood, acrylic paint, and floral wallpaper, totem: Private collection, Bentonville, Arkansas
Exhibition Guide Coordinator
Declaration House
Philadelphia, PA
July-December 2024
Declaration House is a public art and history exhibition presented by Monument Lab at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia featuring Sonya Clark’s public artwork “The Descendants of Monticello,” public programs, and a pop-up Welcome Station outside the historic house throughout summer 2024.
Major support for Declaration House has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from VIA Art Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. Project partners include Independence National Historical Park and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s Monticello and its Getting Word African American Oral History Project.
US | Summer 2024
Sue Mobley | Project Lead
Greta Gabriel | Project Manager (General Management, Cohort, and Publication)
Aubree Penney | Project Manager (Finance, Procurement, and Travel)
Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation.
alexa dexa, Johanna Hedva, and Finnegan Shannon
November 13, 2024 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Explore how disabled and chronically ill artists can reshape our understanding of monuments in the next Monument Lab workshop, curated by Senior Project Manager and Curatorial Associate Aubree Penney.
Monument Lab defines “monument” as “a statement of power and presence in public.” This definition underscores monuments’ significant influence and visibility in our shared spaces. However, too often “public” excludes the disabled and chronically ill. Many cannot reach existing monuments due to physical and social access barriers, including inaccessible architecture; inequity of resources such as lack of time, finances, energy, and transportation; and the continuing threat of COVID-19.
The disabled constitute the largest minority group in the US, with 27% of adults living with a disability according to the National Institute of Health, and people of color and LGBTQIA+ people comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the disabled population. The absence of inclusive design and consideration in public spaces further marginalizes a significant portion of the population—on top of the inequity they encounter daily—even as a lack of representation perpetuates the erasure of disabled people in historical memory and public consciousness.
Bringing together artists whose practices contend with public-ness in light of their own lived experience with disability and chronic illness, this session will investigate how monuments can better anticipate and celebrate every body.
RSVP
National Mall | Washington, DC | August 18-September 18, 2023
Jonai Gibson-Selix | Designer
Aubree Penney | Activities Lead and Writer
Symone Salib | Illustrator
Tina Villadolid | Writer
Activity Booklets were distributed on the National Mall. The booklet poses open ended questions, encouraging interaction with key themes of the project, including monumentality, storytelling, and representation.
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together was presented by the Trust for the National Mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service and curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab.
Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation
National Mall | Washington, DC | August 18-September 18, 2023
Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet | Co-curators
Aubree Penney | Assistant Curator
Jen Cleary and Aubree Penney | Accessibility Co-leads
Curatorial
I had the pleasure of serving as assistant curator in my capacity as a Curatorial Associate for Monument Lab, doing extensive research in preparation for the artist selection process. Drawing from the central question of the exhibition–What stories remain untold on the National Mall?–we wanted to bring artists who could offer compelling responses to the question, reimagining monumentality and representation on the Mall through temporary artworks, or as Monument Lab calls them “prototype monuments.”
Accessibility
We believe “America’s Front Yard” is for everybody and every body. By considering diverse needs, the team behind Beyond Granite: Pulling Together strove to create an inclusive, accessible, and enjoyable experience for all visitors.
Works were placed near accessible pathways, and mesh was installed to form paths at grassy exhibition sites, facilitating easier navigation for those with mobility impairments. Additional accessibility resources, including descriptions of artwork images and sounds, specifics about the Welcome Stations and programming (including ASL and CART), and AI-assisted translations of exhibition materials were available via beyondgranite.org. Visual descriptions were provided as part of speakers’ introductions in programming.
We consider these efforts not only as measures to maximize accessibility but also as intentional extensions of the project, an envisioning of public art on the National Mall as a resource for all.
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together was presented by the Trust for the National Mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service and curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab.
Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation
Image Credits
Wendy Red Star, The Soil You See... (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
Derrick Adams, America’s Playground: DC (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
Paul Ramírez Jonas, Let Freedom Ring (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
vanessa german, Of Thee We Sing (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
Ashon T. Crawley, HOMEGOING (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
Tiffany Chung, For the Living (2023). Photo courtesy Steve Weinik.
National Mall | Washington, DC | August 18-September 18, 2023
Download the Newspaper
Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet | Co-editors
Patricia Kim | Managing Editor
Aubree Penney | Editorial Coordinator
Connie Harvey | DesignerBlair Richardson, MiniSuper Studio | Designer and Illustrator
Featuring contributions by Catherine Townsend, Marcel Acosta, Jeffrey Reinbold, Georgetta and Nekisha Durrett, Related Tactics, and Kirk Savage
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together was present by the Trust for the National Mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service and curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab.
Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation
Leipzig, Germany | November 3-4, 2022
Curated by Iris Rajanayagam of Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb
Organized by Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb (Federal Agency for Political Education) and GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig (GRASSI Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig)
In this symposium, spaces for reflection and exchange will be created in order to discuss possibilities of illuminating hegemonic narratives and histories through so-called transformative archives on a transnational level. It is asked to what extent the documentation, archiving and the provision of marginalized (historical) knowledge sometimes opens up spaces in which new things can be thought of and decolonial options in the landscape of memory politics in Germany and beyond can be discussed.
The focus is on the question of re_centering overwritten, erased or negated knowledge (stocks) and narratives as well as a reflection on the possibilities of expanding collective memory that are linked to this.
The Opening Panel included Nico Rodriguez Melo and myself on behalf of Monument Lab, as well as the Black Cultural Archives London and the Tamil Archive Project.
Senior Project Manager and Curatorial Associate | Philadelphia, PA / Remote | Steptember 2023-present
Project management and long term curatorial strategy and relationship building
Assistant to the Director and Curatorial Associate | Philadelphia, PA / Remote | June 2022-September 2023
Internship coordination, Operations and Administration strategy and implementation, and Project support
Open Space | UN/LEARNING Space | Online | October 2021
The curatorial collective Call You in the Morning organises Worth a Thousand Words: Part II, a toolkit workshop for curators and art professionals who work independently across different media or as part of organisations.
In this workshop, the collective will explore and think through different tools to create accessibility around an art event, and the responsibility that falls on curators and institutions. They will experiment with visual descriptions, attempting to empower creatives to feel more comfortable in being part of the process of making artworks more accessible.
In this session, every participant will write visual descriptions for pieces of artwork, thinking through the nuances and challenges that come with writing about someone else’s work. The workshop will last up to two hours, aiming to create an environment of collaboration and conversation, exploring together how tools to optimise accessibility can be creatively generative in and of themselves.
Online | November 2020 | Emma LD (Various), Hazel Kilinç (TR), Ismail Odetola (NG), Patrick Lydon (JP), and Aubree Penney (US)
Flow Tales is a digital call for artists and exhibition which explore the relationship between landscape and community on a local and global scale, and transfers this criticality to inspiration for artistic production.
Flow Tales are untold stories of water, rivers, seas, lakes, located in an era of disturbed flows around the globe.
In a small suburban yard, beneath the relentless Memphis sun, my grandfather dreamed of a stream, digging a small streambed that framed a slip of an island made just for me. We dreamed of tarps, of plastic liners, of lines of tubing that would make our dreams a reality. We dreamed in waters, shallow and clear and cool. There are moments when I swear there must have been water there. I recall sitting on my island with my feet in the water, the cool of the earth rising up into the soles of my feet. The grass was moist and dewy; your hand would come up damp if you trailed it along the top of the tickling grass. I wasn’t waiting for water. There was already water there. We were just waiting for enough water that our ankles would be wet all the way.
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College | Online | October 2020
Shannon Finnegan, Genderfail, Yvette Granata, Linda Stupart, and Eva Wǒ
Curated by Aubree Penney
Let Us Love You as You Are imagines the potential of exhibitions as care-taking spaces. This extension of the group exhibition An Alarming Specificity, which was originally set to open in the midst of a pandemic, takes up the mantle of creating spaces for bodies too often treated as marginal. Designed to nurture and affirm bodies, especially those of women and nonbinary people, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, and people of color, this event advocates for care and the sharing of care tactics as generous, loving processes that can be both individually and collectively restorative.
Artists Shannon Finnegan, Genderfail, Yvette Granata, Linda Stupart, and Eva Wǒ embrace the medium of Zoom to enable the experience of art in personal spaces, utilizing the digital format as a means of lending intimacy and comfort.
Sweatpants, messy hair, and pandemic exhaustion welcome. Come as you are to rest, learn, and be with us as this virtual exhibition unfolds before you and with you, followed by a Q&A with the artists and curator Aubree Penney.
Generously made possible by the John B. Hurford ‘64 Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Featured images: 1) Linda Stupart Watershed 2020, video, 11:06. 2) Eva Wǒ Post-Supremacy Portal [with Mx. Abdul-Aliy Muhammed, Alex Smith, Andrea Jácome, Arazel Thalez, Ash Richards, Barbara Gittings (1932-2007), Chaska Sofia, Darius McLean, Dev & Zuri Love, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells (1993-2020), Sir Eli Ra & Bryan Oliver Green, Gladys Bentley (1907-1960), Heart Byrne & Harlow Figa, Icon Ebony Fierce, Ixa fka Mr. Manic, Juliana Reyes, Kira Rodriguez, Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943-2000), Manny Figeuroa, Mia Secreto, Moor Mother, Nizah Morris (1955-2002), ociele hawkins, Raani Begum & sub, Shoog McDaniel, Tristan “TK” Morton, Wit López, & Zuri Love] 2020, GIF
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College | March 2020
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Featuring work by Shannon Finnegan, Chitra Ganesh, GenderFail, Yvette Granata, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Linda Stupart, and Eva Wŏ, An Alarming Specificity engages with human bodies which do not align with a fictional norm grounded in white patriarchal hegemony. Curated by Aubree Penney, the exhibition examines ways artists subvert the predominance of white, heterosexual, cis-male, non-disabled bodies as the default of humanity.
Though the physical exhibition and events have been cancelled to help limit the spread of COVID-19, the exhibition will continue its work of upholding individual bodies attempting to survive and thrive in a world which frequently neglects to support, protect, recognize, or heal them. Through its physical closure as an act of care which centers vulnerable bodies, as well as its online presence, An Alarming Specificity is about loving bodies and beings as they are, finding tactics for support. I can think of nothing that suits the project so much as these protective measures. In this interim space, the show still exists, albeit in a very different form. Sometimes care looks like distance. Check the website for forthcoming online elements of the exhibition, and in the spirit of the project, please be extra gentle with yourselves as we navigate this difficult moment.
—Aubree Penney, Curator
The exhibition is made possible with support from The John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, the House Fund for Distinguished Visiting Artists and Critics, and the Haverford College Distinguished Visitors Program.
Featured images:
Eva Wǒ Loaded Fries 2018, digital image for lightbox
Eva Wǒ Bad Bitch N Chill [featuring Kh, Khirby, and Keishi] 2019, GIF
Essay commissioned as part of After Decameron, a project exploring storytelling in the wake of pandemic
April 2020 | Open Space Gallery | Curated by Riet Timmeman
Crosstown Concourse | Memphis, TN | July 25-August 25, 2019
Sully Allen, Jesse Butcher, Zahria Cook, Dehanza, Mulanre "Eddie" Gan, Mary Jo Karimnia, Melanie Manos, Jeremiah Matthews and Kayla Selby, Natalie Minik, Alex Paulus, Cat Peña, Nick Peña, Terri Phillips, Corkey Sinks, Joey Slaughter, Jessica Weaver, Terri Weaver, and Tad Lauritzen Wright
Curated by Aubree Penney
Engaging with the architecture and history of Crosstown and the residues of both its predecessor Sears and its subsequent transformation, group exhibition Negative Space operates within unused miniscule spaces in public areas of Crosstown Concourse. Numerous holes, nails, and small architectural elements pockmark walls and columns, bearing evidence of past usage. Negative Space invites current Artists in Residence at Crosstown Arts as well as local community artists to embrace these underutilized spaces for art display. Featuring both site specific installations as well as a performance by Melanie Manos, Negative Space offers artists and audience members an opportunity both to explore the Concourse and to consider scale and intimacy in public art display.
Made possible by the Crosstown Arts Residency Program. | Graphic design by Jeremiah Matthews.
Photos by Aubree Penney 2019
Crossbones Garden, London | March 2018 | curated by Aubree Penney
featuring work by Laura Agustín, Cora, KLW, L., John Muse, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, and Linda Stupart
The Long Ongoing Moment publication was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Outside at Crossbones Garden, a memorial garden commemorating a mass graveyard in Southwark with a long-standing relationship to sex work.
The resulting publication engages with an embodied sense of history, utilizing artwork as well as academic and creative writing as sites of resonance across time and space to consider death, memorialization, and sex work.
Images 1) L.’s Untitled 2017, digital photograph 2) The publication cover taken from Linda Stupart’s installation and performance some men have mistaken me for death 2017-18 at Mimosa House
Generously supported by Bankside Open Spaces Trust, Friends of Crossbones, the Goldsmiths Alumni and Friends fund, MFA Curating Goldsmiths, and private donations.
Crossbones Garden | London, UK | May 2018
sculptures by Avril Corroon, Richard Ensor, Kate Howard, Alexa Phillips, Aron Rossman-Kiss, and Joseph Steele | performances by Manon Aquilina and Linda Stupart
co-curated by Aubree Penney, Alexa Phillips, and Joseph Steele
Crossbones Garden marks the site where 15,000 people were buried between the 12th Century and 1857. Many of them were sex workers, who were denied consecrated burial despite sex work being legal and licensed by the Bishop of Winchester. Outside connects Crossbones’ history to issues faced by contemporary sex workers.
The six newly commissioned sculptures were installed throughout the garden and were each produced in response to a one-hour conversation with a London-based sex worker.
Generously made possible by Bankside Open Spaces Trust, Crossbones Garden, the Friends of Crossbones, Goldsmiths MFA Curating, and Goldsmiths Alumni and Friends Fund.
Installation and private view photos courtesy of Sam Greer. Photos of Stupart’s performance courtesy of Alexa Phillips.
EnclaveLab | London, UK | 2018
Danielle Ash, John Harris, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, and Paul Wood
Curated by Aubree Penney
a speech showed the chair in the middle reimagined audio description as a form of artistic practice, upholding audio description as a means of creating and having a visual experience. By elevating audio description from the realm of a translative act, it instead became a primary mode of production, a fictioning with the potential to be shared by people of all vision capabilities.
Workshop participants sketched and described their imagined work, and then will each wrote audio descriptions for said work in three styles: objective/conventional museum, subjective (the new style advocated for by disability scholars Rosemarie Garland Thompson and Kristin Lindgren), and Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. Each artist chose one of their variations to have recorded and exhibited the following weekend.
Seating intervention by curator Annika Thiems.
Featured images 1-3 courtesy Sam Greer, 2018; 4 courtesy Paul Wood, 2018
EnclaveLab | London, UK | July-August 2017
Louise Ashcroft, David Raymond Conroy / Karl Smith / Rockstar Games, Nicola Dale, Decolonial Cultural Front, and Arri Lemons
Curated by Aubree Penney |
In conjunction with [Untitled], a public conversation on titling and contemporary art production and display, Labelled explored the relationship between exhibition labels and power.
Featured images: 1) installation of Nicola Dale’s Circular Reading 2017 | 2) detail of Arri Lemons’ Self Preservation 2015 | 3) and 4) installation and detail of Decolonial Cultural Front’s #decolonizethisplace 2016
Generously made possible by Chisenhale Studios, MFA Curating Goldsmiths, and EnclaveLab
EnclaveLab | London, UK | July 2018
Fred Bungay, Lucy Cowling, Riet Timmerman, and Aubree Penney
Curated by Aubree Penney
In his 2015 book The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, David Graeber speaks of the form’s ability to render us stupid through its deliberate fragmenting and compartmentalizing of information about ourselves and our world into boxes. Graeber ultimately proposes creative work as a means of escaping bureaucratic structure. ReFORMed took up this mantle, reconsidering the form as a tool for codifying and creating information through creative strategies.ReFORMed featured work made in a corresponding workshop which addressed how bureaucratic measures facilitate and complicate our lives, our identities, and our creative projects and considered where we position both ourselves and the figure of the human bureaucrat against the maze of information extraction and processing. The project investigated how forms can become sites of resistance both in their creation and in the act of completion. A series of completed forms toyed with the idea of an honest or reasonable answer and reimagine each form's purpose. Newly crafted forms for viewers to fill out yielded both humour and frustration, mapped across a sea of boxes and blanks.
Generously supported by MFA Curating Goldsmiths
Photos courtesy of Sam Greer, 2018.
