Over the past few years, the concept of monuments has come into question—their inherent myths of power and permanence are being challenged as we re-evaluate who deserves to be memorialized by history and whether they embody a collective experience. These ideas have been key for the Black Reconstruction Collective, a group of artists, architects, and scholars behind projects that aim to dismantle systemic whiteness in their fields. Its latest undertaking seeks to upend conventional ideas of what a monument can be. Fittingly titled Unmonument, the project sees artist Olalekan Jeyifous ascribe such significance to a banal piece of construction equipment—in this case, a repurposed maintenance lift coated in matte black paint—before handing it off to Black artists across the country in a year-long game of exquisite corpse.
Unmonument follows a pilot run by Amanda Williams and V. Mitch McEwen from last year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial. The collective hopes that, as opposed to existing as a static structure venerating singular (often disreputable) figures, the nomadic installation instead sparks celebration and interest in the communities it visits. The project kicked off this week at Brooklyn’s Weeksville Heritage Center—the site of one of the country’s first free Black communities—with three days of activities like film screenings and sonic meditations, but it will soon travel upstate to Syracuse. There, Sekou Cooke will mark the site of a future monument he’s designing to honor minority veterans. Afterward, Unmonument will travel across the country in the hands of three architects: Pennsylvania with Felecia Davis; Los Angeles with J. Yolande Daniels; and Atlanta with Emanuel Admassu.
Unmonument is the fourth entry in Jeyifous’s visionary Protopian series, which explores how reclaiming detritus can harmonize with ecological stewardship through the lens of imagined Black fugitive communities. “In my sci-fi inspired retro-futurist ‘worlds,’ solutions and ‘technological advancements’ need not come from producing more and perpetuating the cycle of planned obsolescence that dominates scientific, medical, and technological innovation,” says Jeyifous, who has brought his work to MoMA, Pioneer Works, and Art Omi. “When we decided to source an old maintenance lift from somewhere like Facebook Marketplace or a local ad, it felt like we were heading in the right direction.”
