Taking a closer look at the process behind conceptualizing and building new monuments with perspectives from Germany and the US. How democratic is the process?
Register to join the Panel here!
Livestream on Youtube
Panelists:
L'Merchie Frazier, visual and performance artist /educator /consultant
Ulf Aminde, artist, performer, filmmaker and activist
Moderator: Devin Morris, cofounder and executive director of The Teacher's Lounge
What Makes a Monument? As recent community-led take-down actions across the world have demonstrated, “permanent” monuments are a myth. This panel gathers voices from Boston and Germany to discuss the significance of monuments in our communities today. These artists, writers, and cultural leaders will share their insights into the ever-evolving characteristics of a monument through a conversation on recent examples of new monuments or their takedowns. The panel will ask how communities can be more empowered to co-create and steward long-term artworks in our communities.
©L'Merchie Frazier
L'Merchie Frazier (b. Jacksonville, Florida) is a Boston-based visual and performance artist /educator /consultant and currently serves as the Director of Education at the Museum of African-American History, Boston / Nantucket. Her work provocatively traverses the mediums of fiber, beads, metals, poetry, performance, or work with community, serving as threads of memory, reclaimed from the icons that bring recognition, salvation, redemption. Through her visual artwork, she creates and has lauded support and praise for her evocative fiber and metal sculptures, innovative mixed-media installations, hand-crafted beaded jewelry, and powerful quilt series, the “Quilted Chronicles.”
L’Merchie has remained an active and pivotal member of the New England Community for over twenty years. Her work has been exhibited in the public and private collections of numerous institutions— University of Vermont, the American Museum of Art and Design, New York, and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; and appeared in numerous publications— A History of Art in Africa, by Monica Visona, International Review of African American Art, Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama and Spirits of the Cloth, by Carolyn Mazloomi.
©Svenja Leiber
Ulf Aminde is an artist, performer, filmmaker and activist based in Berlin, Germany. His projects bring together people with completely different social backgrounds, in which social divisions and hierarchies are not only revealed but also prove to be unstable. The transformation of repressed behavior and the call for social change are therefore at the center of his work.
His project, Antiracist Memorial, Keupstrasse, Herkesin Meydanı - Place for Everyone, supports the construction of a memorial commemorating the racist bomb attacks in Cologne in 2001 and 2004. As a counterposition to the racist suspicions against migrants, the memorial is based on many conversations with residents and initiatives from the neighborhood and combines the concept of memory with a future that needs to be constantly (visually) renewed by a “Society of the Many.”
©DMorris
Devin Morris, originally from Brooklyn, NY is the cofounder and executive director of The Teacher's Lounge, a non-profit organization dedicated to driving unprecedented student outcomes by greatly diversifying the people, thoughts, and actions of the educational workforce in the Greater Boston Area and beyond.
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