Monumental Sculptural Project Opens In NYC
While many museums around New York City have remained shut since coronavirus gripped the country, a local park in Queens has a new exhibit displaying public art.
The project is called MONUMENTS NOW, located within Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria. According to their website, “MONUMENTS NOW… seeks to address the role of monuments in society and commemorate underrepresented narratives such as diasporic, Indigenous, and queer histories.”
The exhibit is a breath of fresh air for New Yorkers desperate to satisfy their art cravings, it is outdoors and able to be admired while socially distancing. MONUMENTS NOW opens in three parts: the first being contemporary sculptures by three major artists (as seen below). Come October, the second and third additions will unveil, with 10 more sculptures addressing underrepresented histories and a project made by high school students.
On View Now
Photo: Scott Lynch
Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House
This work by Jeffrey Gibson resembles a pre-colonial Native American ziggurat, “drawing from Indigenous Mississippian culture, architecture, activist graphic traditions, and queer performative strategies, the large-scale public sculpture projects a future vision of the world that embraces complexities within collective identity.”
Photo: Sara Morgan
Eternal Flame
“Paul Ramírez Jonas imagines his Eternal Flame monument as a communal grill. The form honors the role of cuisine and cooking in cultural cohesion and expression among immigrant communities and identities. Eternal Flame is designed to invite dialogue and exchange.”
Rendering courtesy of the artist and David Castillo Gallery
The structure the labor the foundation the escape the pause
This work has not been released yet but, “Xaviera Simmons’ contribution, The structure the labor the foundation the escape the pause, is composed of sculptural forms – each baring landscapes of text culled from historical documents foundational to racial disenfranchisement in the United States. The works are a monument to promises denied, offering insight into governmental policies that continue to shape the racial caste system we live within presently.”
MONUMENTS NOW will be open until March 2021!