USF Contemporary Art Museum Presents 'Marking Monuments'

TAMPA, FL — On Jan. 22, the USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the Institute for Research in Art in the College of The Arts, is launching the hybrid exhibition titled "Marking Monuments" in both online and physical spaces.

Engaging with the global dialogues confronting colonialist and racist monuments, markers and memorials in public space, "Marking Monuments" presents a selection of artists’ installations and interventions that challenge, erase and transform dominant histories, offering reimagined representations for equity in public culture. "Marking Monuments" includes projects by Ariel René Jackson, Joiri Minaya, John Sims and Karyn Olivier in collaboration with poet Trapeta B. Mayson.

"Marking Monuments" also features Field Trip, a community-engaged activity conceived by Philadelphia-based public art and history studio Monument Lab. Field Trip invites investigation into local monuments in any community, generates questions about art and justice in public space, and seeks proposals for new ideas for monuments. Accessible both online and in-person at the USF Contemporary Art Museum, the hands-on activity guide can be conducted safely in public space or from home using Street View, Google Earth or other online tools. Public participants are encouraged to share their ideas, questions and photos from their Field Trip with Monument Lab on social media by tagging @Monument_Lab and using #MonumentLabFieldTrip to connect with others.

"Marking Monuments" is curated by Sarah Howard and organized by the USF Contemporary Art Museum. It is made possible by funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation, IRA Initiatives for Social Justice Fund, USFCAM Art for Community Engagement (ACE) Fund, the Lee and Victor Leavengood Endowment, the Florida Department of State, and Florida Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

There will be a symposium on "Reimagining Monuments: Contemporary Interventions in Public Space," Saturday, Jan. 23 at 11 .m. online via Zoom and Facebook Live.

This panel engages with the global dialogue confronting how monuments construct historical meaning and perpetuate colonialist and racist narratives throughout public culture.

Contemporary artists and leading practitioners in the public art field will discuss their artistic practice and creative strategies to challenge, erase and transform the dominant histories and symbols to offer reimagined representations for equity in the public realm.

Panelists include Ariel René Jackson, Joiri Minaya, Karyn Olivier, John Sims and Patricia Enuji Kim from Monument Lab. Moderated by Curator Sarah Howard, this panel is the first in a four-part symposium series, "Monuments, Markers and Memory," that focuses on the critical exploration of power, politics and activism around public monuments and memorials.

The "Monuments, Markers and Memory" symposium series is made possible through a partnership between the Florida Public Archaeology Network; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; USF Department of Anthropology; USF Contemporary Art Museum; New College Public Archaeology Lab; and State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota, and is supported by Florida Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities and USF ResearchOne.

Information on future panels can be found on the Monuments, Markers and Memory Facebook Page.

Marking Monuments Curator's Tour will take place Thursday, Feb. 25 at 6 p.m. online via Zoom and Facebook Live.

Sarah Howard, USF Curator of Public Art and Social Practice, will lead an online tour of the exhibition "Marking Monuments" and discuss the power of monuments to construct history and reflect collective memories of the past, present and future.

About The Artists

Ariel René Jackson (b. 1991) works across film, sculpture and performance, exploring land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Their work is centered in investigations of ancestral memory and knowledge and informed by Jackson’s research on economic and social systems of segregation, cultivating intergenerational dialogues around themes of loss, transformation and growth. An alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Madison, ME), Jackson’s work has been exhibited at various galleries and institutions including the SculptureCenter (Queens, NY); CUE Art Foundation (NYC); Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; DePaul Art Museum (Chicago, IL); Studio Museum in Harlem; and RISD Museum (Providence, RI). Jackson currently lives and works in Austin, Texas where they received an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019.

Trapeta B. Mayson (b. 1967) is a Liberian-born poet, teacher and licensed social worker. The City of Philadelphia 2020-2021 Poet Laureate, Mayson’s work shines light on and honors the immigrant experience and amplifies the experience of community life as a catalyst to mobilize, build and create social transformation. Mayson has received a Pew Fellowship in Literature, a Leeway Transformation Award, a Leeway Art and Change Grant, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant. She is a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow and a 2019 Aspen Words Emerging Writer’s Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Mayson is an author and her works have been published in The American Poetry Review, Epiphany Literary Journal, Aesthetica Magazine, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, among others.

Joiri Minaya (b. 1990) is a U.S. born and Dominican-raised multidisciplinary artist living and working in New York City. Her practice confronts historic and contemporary representations of black and brown womanhood, tropical identity and the Gaze in order to decolonize and subvert imposed histories, and hierarchical representations of culture. Minaya has exhibited across the United States and internationally, including the Caribbean. She has received grants from Artadia, the Nancy Graves Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Minaya has received recognition and awards from XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes, Centro de la Imagen (D.R.), and the XXVII Biennial at the Museo de Arte Moderno (D.R). She participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Madison, ME); Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY); Bronx Museum’s AIM Program; Lower East Side Printshop (NYC); Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY); Art Omi (Ghent, NY); and Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT).

Karyn Olivier (b. 1968) is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator who creates public art, sculpture, and installations that expose social, political, and economic contradictions, and the residue of slavery in contemporary culture. Olivier has created large-scale commissioned work for Monument Lab, Creative Time and New York City and Philadelphia’s Percent for Art programs. She has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan Biennials (South Korea); World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal); The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Whitney Museum of Art (NYC) ; MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY); and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others. Olivier received the 2018-19 Rome Prize and has been the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, among many others. Olivier is an associate professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia.

John Sims (b. 1968) is a Detroit native and Sarasota-based artist, writer and social justice activist whose interdisciplinary creative practice expands to installation, text, film, music and performance projects. Informed by mathematics, design theory, sacred symbols and the power of poetic and political text, Sims has been actively challenging white supremacy and confronting Confederate iconography and commemoration for the past two decades through long-term multimedia projects, annual public performances, and political op-eds. Sims is currently the 2020-21 Artist in Residence at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC News, USA Today, NPR, The Guardian, ThinkProgress, Al Jazeera, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Sculpture, Science News, Nature and Scientific American. He has written for CNN, Al Jazeera, The HuffPost, Guernica Magazine, The Rumpus and the Grio.

Monument Lab is a public art and history studio based in Philadelphia. Monument Lab works with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies and cultural institutions on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory. Founded by Paul Farber and Ken Lum in 2012, Monument Lab cultivates and facilitates critical conversations around the past, present and future of monuments. The Monument Lab team includes Kanyinsola Anifowoshe, Patricia Eunji Kim, Hilary C.V. Leathem, Sue Mobley and Yannick Trapman-O'Brien and is supported by the Center for Public Art and Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. Monument Lab Field Trip was designed and illustrated by Mike Murawski and Bryna Campbell with Super Nature Adventures.