Black Reconstruction Collective Opens Collaborative Public Art Installation To Be Installed Across Five US Sites
Unmonument is an architectural project around a nomadic sculpture conceived as an ‘exquisite corpse’ exercise, meant to refuse the traditional idea of monuments and inspire collective action
Following a pilot run by Amanda Williams and V. Mitch McEwen at the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, Unmonument’s yearlong run begins with an installation from Olalekan Jeyifous in Brooklyn, NY followed by Sekou Cooke (Syracuse), Felecia Davis (Bellefonte), J. Yolande Daniels (Los Angeles), and Emanuel Admassu (Atlanta)
Brooklyn, NY (July 29, 2024) - This summer, the Black Reconstruction Collective will officially begin their first collaborative intervention in the built environment – a traveling installation that will tour five US sites over the next year, with each location hosting an interactive, iterative intervention designed by a founding BRC board member. Titled Unmonument, the project is both site-less and multi-sited: a series of installations around a sculptural object, the ‘unmonument’ itself, which is a matte black, steel industrial lift. This project was first piloted as part of the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which was themed around testing ideas, and will begin its official first act in Brooklyn, New York on August 8.
Conceived as a means to reimagine possibilities for the emancipation for the African Diaspora, Unmonument memorializes the Liberators of Black America – Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Toussaint Louverture – and the Self-Liberated communities found throughout the Americas – Ambrosio, Fort Mose, The Great Dismal Swamp. Challenging the concept of monuments and their inherent myths of power, permanence, and collective experience, the Unmonument sculpture appears almost as a piece of scaffolding or construction equipment. Flexible, unprecious, and movable, the sculpture is inherently and intentionally unspectacular – it is an infrastructure for recognizing the community that surrounds it, a beacon to celebrate, to gather, and to come together.
Unmonument is conceived as an ever-changing, communal version of the idea of a monument – rather than something permanent and dogmatic, it is an architectural manifestation of the surrealist’s exquisite corpse game, in which each participant takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal their contribution, and then passes it to the next player for a further contribution. At each site, the unmonument sculpture will be modified, extended, and used in different ways, creating a new version of the installation responsive to the local community.
"By adapting a refurbished maintenance lift as a mobile site of intervention and then sequentially passing it from one Black artist to another — location to location — the industrial object is transformed into a powerful yet accessible symbol of resilience and ingenuity,” noted Olalekan Jeyifous. “The 'exquisite corpse' method of working emphasizes creative practices of refusal and the strength of collective storytelling inherent to liberated communities, while providing a compelling platform for a dynamic and evolving archive of Black cultural expression. At the same time, this approach and object nod towards a history of violence, extraction, and exclusion in this country and in this field, through which Black creativity has persevered and flourished”
The Black Reconstruction Collective is a group of Black architects, artists, designers, and scholars who came together to build a sphere of influence and representation for black and brown creatives that exists outside of traditional spheres of power within the field. Led by Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams, the BRC seeks opportunities to elevate and prioritize Black and Brown perspectives within and outside of traditional systems of power, promotion, and control in the predominantly white and western canon of architecture in America. Formed out of the 2021 Black Reconstructions exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which provided a window into the diverse practices of Black creatives in America today, the BRC’s work is focused on elevating and promoting the wide network of folks doing incredible and often underrecognized work across this sphere.
Each of the Unmonument sites will include an installation and programmatic extension designed by a founding member of the BRC. Each version will engage its local and international communities in a “call and response”, exploring the impact and importance of the “Liberators and Self-Liberated Communities” today. The interventions and events range from block parties to film screenings, and sites include:
- August 2024 - Brooklyn, NY, designed and organized by Olalekan Jeyifous
- September 2024 - Syracuse, NY, designed and organized by Sekou Cooke
- December 2024 - Bellefonte, PA, designed and organized by Felecia Davis
- January 2025- Los Angeles, CA, designed and organized by J. Yolande Daniels
- June 2025 - Atlanta, GA, designed and organized by Emanuel Admassu
As Unmonument navigates the country, details on each site will be revealed. Oral tradition studio Black Discourse leads on programming and creative vision of the Unmonument, managing the project across all sites.
About the Black Reconstruction Collective
The Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) provides funding, design, and intellectual support to the ongoing and incomplete project of emancipation for the African Diaspora. The BRC is committed to multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary work dedicated to dismantling systemic white supremacy and hegemonic whiteness within art, design, and academia. Founded by a group of Black architects, artists, designers, and scholars, the BRC aims to amplify knowledge production and spatial practices by individuals and organizations that further the reconstruction project.
The BRC engages the public through an annual process of reviewing proposals and providing critical and financial support to projects that have been selected by the committee. This work will manifest in built commissions, research funding, exhibitions, events, and publications, that will collectively imagine transformations to the built environment in the Black Radical Tradition. Founding board members include:
- Emanuel Admassu is co-principal of AD—WO, an art and architecture practice based in Harlem, New York and an Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP.
- Germane Barnes is the Director of Studio Barnes and an Associate Professor and the Director of The Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
- Sekou Cooke resides in Charlotte, North Carolina where he runs the design practice sekou cooke STUDIO.
- J. Yolande Daniels is a co-principal at studioSUMO New York and an Associate Professor at MIT.
- Felecia Davis is principal of Felecia Davis Studio and an Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University and is the Director of SOFTLAB@PSU.
- Mario Gooden is a cultural practice architect and director of Mario Gooden Studio: Architecture + Design in New York and a Professor at Columbia University GSAPP where he is the co-director of the Global Africa Lab.
- Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA, a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a MacArthur Fellow.
- Olalekan Jeyifous is a Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist and designer whose work reimagines social spaces that examine the relationships between architecture, community and the environment.
- V. Mitch McEwen is the co-founder of the design practice Atelier Office in Harlem and Assistant Professor at Princeton School of Architecture.
- Amanda Williams is an acclaimed Chicago-based visual artist who uses ideas around color and architecture to explore intersections of race and the built environment. She is a MacArthur Fellow.
Media contact
Sara Griffin
+1-917-656-6348