When Monuments Fall is a selection of paintings and sculptures that interrogate the precarious position of monumentality. This body of work contests the ideological and the symbolic manifestations of colonialism and intersects with current international conversations around the recontextualization, revision, and removal of monuments.
In these large-scale watercolor paintings, monuments are in transition, broken or veiled. At their core, these paintings question how monuments participate in the construction and narratives of state power and supplant lived memories and histories. The work problematizes the inability of the heroic monument to move beyond reinforcing dominant powers. While the current undoing and the removal of these monuments mark an important shift in our understanding of oppression and nationhood, this reckoning does not undo the figures’ legacies of violence.
The ceramic sculptures reimagine municipal and royal stamps, incorporating teeth, hair and a humbler as a way to reintroduce the personal into a space that was once meant to obscure individual bodies. These seal matrices interrupt the symbolic with the corporeal, reminding us of a very real absence in the historic record.
The Hand of The King, 2021
watercolor on paper
40 x 40 inches
Forgetful Long Goodbyes, 2021
Watercolor on paper
40 x 40 inches
Late Stage Love Affairs, 2021
Watercolor on paper
40 x 40 inches
I Told You Once, 2021
Ceramic and wax
7.25 x 5.125 x 4.5 inches
‘Member Me, 2021,
Ceramic and wax
2.5 x 3.75 x 5.75
In Case the Wind Will Not Listen, 2021
Watercolor on paper
72 x 108 inches
Canopy, 2021
Watercolor on paper
60 x 40 inches
When Monuments Fall, installation view, 2021
Fuck Around And Find Out (Word Is Bond), 2021
ceramic, hair, wax
3.25 x 4 x 4.5 inches
I Told You Once, 2021
Ceramic and wax
7.25 x 5.125 x 4.5 inches
‘Member Me, 2021,
Ceramic and wax
2.5 x 3.75 x 5.75 inches
Fuck Around And Find Out (Hand to God), 2021
Ceramic and wax
8.5 x 4 x 4 inches
When Monuments Fall, installation view, 2021