Conversation #2: Projecting The Future
With Tomie Arai and Alisha B. Wormsley.
Tomie Arai and Alisha B. Wormsley are among the 2020 Shaping the Past fellows with Monument Lab and the Goethe-Institut. Individually, their work endeavors to hold space for who/what is already present and project their specific communities into the future against forces of structural racism (neglect, urban renewal, gentrification). Together, the two fellows considered their practices at large, and methods for revisioning the past in ways that do not seek to harm.
Watch the recording here.
About the speaker
Tomie Arai is a public artist who lives and works in New York City. She has designed both temporary and permanent public works of art, with several decades of experience working with local communities to create visual narratives that give meaning to the spaces we live in. Arai uses the specificity of her experience as an Asian American as a personal space in which to locate broader issues of race and gender, of inclusion and exclusion, and of belonging and non-belonging. She is one of the co-founders of The Chinatown Art Brigade, a radical cultural collective that creates new models of artistic production that engages with community groups to collect shared histories of resistance and social recall.
Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work focuses on collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color. Wormsley’s project, There are Black People in the Future, is inspired by afro-futurist artists and writers who highlight the need for black people to claim their place. Through the inscription and utterance of the words, ‘There are Black People in the Future,’ the project addresses systematic oppression of black communities through space and time by reassuring the presence of black bodies. In 2017, Wormsley placed these words on a billboard in East Liberty, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s east end that has suffered gentrification. When the billboard was removed by the city, community members protested. Since then, the billboard has replicated in various locations across the world.
Marking Absences – Shifting Narratives, organized by curator Niama Safia Sandy, takes place in multiple formats including a digital conversation series, an interactive installation, and more.
Leading up to the events: A People’s Manifesto
1014 and the Goethe-Institut New York asked New Yorkers how they believe monuments and public art should function. In October, their answers will be displayed on the Goethe-Institut’s storefront at 30 Irving Place. Visit bit.ly/publicartmanifesto to contribute.
Marking Absences – Shifting Narratives is presented by the Goethe-Institut New York and 1014 as part of Shaping the Past, a project of the Goethe-Institut, Monument Lab, and the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Shaping the Past connects memory workers across Canada, Mexico, the US, and Germany who have piloted new approaches to shape the past in their own local contexts. Visit www.goethe.de/shapingthepast for more information on the project and all related events.
Photo: Library Street Collective “Alisha B. Wormsley: Billboard in Detroit”