Shaping the Past: Empty Pedestals

Empty Pedestals is a public participatory performance by Ada Pinkston that will take place in Emancipation Square, Washington DC. When the Empty Pedestals are installed, it is an invitation for everyday citizens and residents to share their perspectives on monuments and the future. The performance explores new ways of activating the empty spaces left by monuments that have been removed. 

© Ada Pinkston

Ada Pinkston is an artist, educator, and cultural organizer living and working in Baltimore, MD, where she is a lecturer in Art Education at Towson University. Her work explores the intersection of imagined histories and sociopolitical realities on our bodies using performance, digital media, and mixed-media sculptures and installations.

Empty Pedestals is presented in the framework of Shaping the Past. Shaping the Past is a partnership of the Goethe-Institut, Monument Lab, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education). The project connects to the activist and artistic work of local, national, and transnational movements as a reflection of memory culture and discusses new perspectives on forms of memory.