2020 was a year marked by protests in which public monuments were activated as sites to challenge the legacy of the figures memorialized and the social structures they represent. This proposal for the 2021 Chicago Monuments Project was a collaboration with artist and choreographer Brendan Fernandes.
While George Washington has been celebrated as a founding father, his role in slavery and genocide is one that has not been forgotten by contemporary Black and Indigenous communities. The monument was established as a celebration of liberty and equality, but to those affected by the continuing legacy of oppression, it is an enduring celebration of American leaders whose acts contradict the ideals they are held to represent.
The monument in Chicago’s Washington Park serves as a wayfinder for visitors to the park, and a meeting point for neighborhood running clubs. The Washington Prairie proposes to wrap the monument in scaffolding supporting a garden of native, indigenous plants that will grow to obscure the figure of Washington while maintaining the plinth as a public marker and collective space. In our cities, scaffolding is a symbol of spaces of change, appropriated here to transform a static monument into a work space for public engagement and symbol of transformation. The garden not only blocks Washington from view but becomes a new symbol of renewal and change.
Washington Prairie
