Monuments Reimagined: Contemporary Artists as Changemakers Panel

In November 2022, Gianofer Fields hosted a panel discussion on how artists can disrupt the public art narrative and forge new paths toward re-memorializing our shared past.

The panelists were Naima Murphy Salcido, former Director of Partnerships at Monument Lab; Professor Faisal Abdu’Allah, Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art, UW–Madison; Sanford Biggers, contemporary artist; and Marilu Knode, independent curatorial consultant.

Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.

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Transcript

Gianofer Fields  00:02
Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. The following episode is a recording of a live panel discussion held at the Chazen Museum of Art in November of 2022. The discussion that was entitled "Monuments Reimagined: Contemporary Artists as Changemakers.” The topic: How can we re memorialize our shared past? It was my pleasure to host a conversation about the role of contemporary artists in disrupting the narrative of public art, forging new paths, and understanding the role that plays, if any, in community identity.

Candie Waterloo  00:47
Good morning everyone. My name is Candie Waterloo and I'm Head of Education here at the Chazen. I want to thank you for joining us in this space and before we begin the program, we're going to start with what we do at the top of every program and read the land acknowledgement here at the university. The University of Wisconsin Madison occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land, a place their nation has called Teejop since time immemorial. In an 1832 treaty, the Ho-Chunk were forced to cede this territory. Decades of ethnic cleansing followed, when both the federal and state government repeatedly but unsuccessfully sought to forcibly remove the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin. This history of colonization informs our shared future of collaboration and innovation. Today, UW Madison respects the inherent sovereignty of the Ho-Chunk nation, along with 11 other First Nations of Wisconsin.

Candie Waterloo  00:34
Today's panel, Monuments Reimagined: Contemporary Artists as Changemakers, is moderated by Chazen storyteller in residence, Gianofer Fields, I could spend … yeah, Gianofer! Gianofer and our esteemed panelists will contend with questions about how we can re memorialize our shared past in ways that disrupt the status quo. I could spend the entire hour listing the credentials and achievements of the felt of our guests. But I won't do that because I know we want to get to what will be a robust discussion, so I'm just gonna go from far too close to me. So joining us is Director of Partnerships at Monument lab, Naima Murphy Salcido. Sitting next to Naima is contemporary artist Sanford Biggers. Next we have independent curatorial consultant Marilu Knode and last but not least, Chazen Family Distinguished Chair of Art and professor here at UW Madison, Faisal Abdu’Allah. All right, Gianofer, take it away.

Gianofer Fields  02:51
Okay. Hello, my name is Gianofer Fields, but you already know that. So what I'm going to do is that I'm really wanting to focus his conversation on what is a monument and how that creates a space? And how will we create a place for community. But we're currently reading this book how the world word is passed by Clint Smith. And there's a paragraph in here that I want to start off with, and I timed myself, it takes me three seconds to read a line. So this should be 26 seconds. Take off your stopwatch is If you dare, and it's as follows:

 “New Orleans is my home. It is where I was born and raised. It is part of me in ways I continue to discover. But I came to realize that I knew relatively little about my hometowns relationship to the centuries of bondage rooted in the city, soft earth. And the statutes I had walked past daily, the names and streets I had left on the schools I had attended, and the buildings that had once been nothing more to me than remnants of colonial architecture. It was all right in front of me even when I didn't know to look for it.”

And I think that's one of the key elements of what a monument is.  But I'd like to start this conversation by asking you Naima, what is a monument? How do we define monuments? 

Naima Murphy Salcido  04:00
No, thank you. So a lot of that question is something that pops up all the time. And I think in our work at Monument lab, what we know for sure, is that there isn't one definition of monument. You know, we've taken it upon ourselves to define a monument as a statement of power and presence in public. And that's how we kind of move through our own partnerships and relationships to really reimagine what it means to be in public space and be represented. In a recent in one of our recent projects, a national monument audit, we had to define a monument in order to count and in order to create a dataset and we found that so that despite our own our own thinking, and what many others think that sometimes there's an office somewhere like that is keeping tabs on all the monuments, making sure their their upkeep is there, all that stuff. It's actually more Most often being checked by property records. And so another kind of demonstration of that power in place of who owns this place and cares enough for, you know, certain monuments to stay erected. So, I guess that's a little nebulous, but for me and for the organization is really like that statement of power and presence.

Gianofer Fields  05:21
So Faisal and Sanford, as artists who place monuments, talk to me about the considerations of what you're thinking about when you're placing an object there? Is it the space that determines it? Is it the material? Is it the emotion of the, is it the emotion of the message? How do you start to think about monumental work when you as you're creating and conceptualizing, and either one of you?

Faisal Abdu’Allah  05:46
I mean, not just quickly? I mean, I mean, good morning. I mean, I just think from my standpoint, I think there's a sacred connection between memory and imagination. And that's the premise at which I start to insert myself into thinking about an object in public space. And I think that if the memory is jaded, or ill-informed, then imagination can't function. So that's basically my kind of piece. 

Gianofer Fields  06:15
Sanford ,how do you approach that?

 Sanford Biggers  06:18
Well, first, I try to determine if I am actually making a monument. Working monumentally versus making a monument are different things. And I take in consideration, obviously, the history of where the piece might be going, recent history, older history, and the demographic that it may be serving, and then what kind of statement I might be wanting to make with those considerations in mind. So, again, you know, I've done pieces that I think memorialize things, but their scale actually has been diminutive. I've done pieces that are, you know, monumental, but I was very emphatic in saying that this is a contemporary art work for people to come and put their ideas and their discussion to, it's not commemorating anything that’s been here in the past. In fact, it's trying to open up a future dialogue. But this is a case-by-case thing. There might be an opportunity or a situation where literally, I would be replacing a monument. And then my considerations might change. But so far, that's how it's been.

Faisal Abdu’Allah  07:14
You know, and I think that opening up is really important, because, you know, I consider it, you know, blueprint, almost like a portal, that it's not a grandiose piece about me, it's more about coming to the work and understanding why the pieces come into existence, because it's talking about far more complex issues. Something as simple as sitting in a chair above a chair or sitting in the hairdresser's chair, and understanding how transformative that is for human being, and how you're able to, like, you know, occupy another space by being the best version of yourself through the laying on of hands. And in some ways, the hairstylist or the barber is during the form of sculpting during the form of refashioning. 

Gianofer Fields  07:53
And it's also extraordinarily intimate. I mean, you just don’t let anybody touch your head, you know, because it really does sort of determine how you move through the world. In terms of how monuments, monumental works, are in the world, Marilu talk to me about placement, like how, what are you considering when you think about placing a monument in a space?

Marilu Knode  08:15
I think, I think that really depends on what your opportunities are, in, in sort of where you're working. So for example, I worked for many years at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis. And what was really great about that was we controlled 105 acres, so we could sort of put things where we wanted. But our goal was to do works under the rubric “archaeology of place.” So there's, no matter what we did in the suburban landscape was to reinscribe a sense of place for people who don't really understand what landscape is. And so within the park, we have to figure out where's this going to be seen from a distance? You know, things really change when you're outside, you can really change scale. If we can take a Bernard Williams car made of plywood, and it makes Alexander Lieberman's huge piece look small as a result, that's where you're really playing with space, and sort of conflating how does it relate to things. So when I worked for Sculpture Milwaukee, however, when you work in an urban environment, you have a whole different set of things to really contend with. And it's not just skateboarders. It's really about the size and shape of the buildings around you. And it's actually sort of what does this financial district mean? You know, what does it mean for the city? What does it mean for the people who live here? And how can we empower people do feel that they belong there, too.

So scaling, color has a lot to do with it, for sure. We put a Tony Tasset Blob Monster in front of the federal building, partially because there's nothing on the corner, because the Feds don't like you to put crap on their corner. But it was a big … right? No bubbler bikes, but it was a big monster going like this. The kids loved it. And somebody said to me, but isn't this like a sort of a political statement to like, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Of course, it's a political statement. Because everything's a political statement, right? So there's got to be some sort of context. So if you have a big ugly building behind you, then you have to figure out how do you counter a big ugly building. If it's a beautiful, exquisite building from, you know, the 30s and its Art Deco, then you put a Guta Ama next to it. So it really, you know, it's being very sensitive to space is coming as a, you know, from a position of a curator, but to support artists, you know, always the work that I do is in support of artists, what best makes their work look fantastic. But where's that critical commentary?

Sanford Biggers  10:36
For me, that was really a major consideration when doing the piece at Rockefeller Center, the Oracle, so it ended up being you know, a monolithic black, very curvaceous figure amongst very tall, rigid grey buildings. And, you know, arguably one of the most the busiest intersections and a symbol of Commerce and the grandiosity of New York City. And there's already so many references to Greco Roman history and mythology that I wanted to create something that potentially could create new myths. So I wanted it to function. It wasn't a passive piece, but it was one that engaged all the viewers, but it also changed, it works really within the landscape. And I'm pretty sure you feel the same way about this. But that's part of the challenge. And the fun of doing something at that scale, is literally saying, How am I composing this within an urban or, you know, suburban environment? And how does that environment affect the work that how does the work go back and affect the environment?

Gianofer Fields  11:37
And also that I think that the conversation between the community and the work, like, how does that come in, because I know you talk about putting elements and symbols in your work, and you talk about monumental versus monument, talk to me or talk to us about how that conversation with the community where this piece will be placed sort of comes into play.

 Faisal Abdu’Allah  11:56
I mean, I always think it's important to not necessarily parachute ideas into communities. And I think having some kind of shared history, some kind of platform or shared history. And it was a beautiful moment that took place was I got a photograph sent to me by Christina, the director of MMoCA [Madison Museum of Contemporary Art]. And what happened was, somebody had set up outside of the Chazen cutting hair on a public street, literally, six feet from my piece. And then they went out and they said, Oh, why are you doing this? And he says, he performed with public haircuts for people who maybe are homeless. And they said to him, Have you seen that piece next to you? and he was like, No. And then he looked, and then he and then he recognized the contours on the chair, the contours on the chair. So obviously, that is a symbol that is a very kind of familiar, iconic Belmont barber chair. So he immediately recognized it. And then this thing went wild on Instagram.

So people began to understand that there was a familiar form that they could necessarily connect with historically, and they will talk about their parents taking them to the shop. So there was this really interesting conversation taking place. Once people saw there was a recognized form. And also the way in which the piece was was augmented through Quarra [Quarra Stone], because I said, I wanted the base to be almost unfinished. And as you move through, or elevate through the piece, there were certain finishes that I wanted. So we got in Martin Foote, who finished the hands and the head, which was a very important component for the piece. And in some ways, it's a metaphor for who we are as human beings, because limestone, as Jim would say, comes out of the ground, hard and soft, comes out of ground soft, and hardens over time. And they always say human beings in some ways, you know, they harden as they get older. And I would hope that they don't embrace that part of the stone, but they embrace the reverse of it. So I want them to soften as they kind of meet the work.

 Gianofer Fields  13:45
And how does the reflective quality play in your work,Sanford, that you have up? 

Sanford Biggers  13:50
So yes, unfortunately, I don't have an image of it. But you can look online, there is a new monumental piece, monumental scale piece. In Orange County, the Orange County Museum, called Of many waters, and it is made with a two-tone, stainless steel surface that has many disks. So some were black and some were reflective, and they blow in the wind. So when you see it from a distance, it looks like a large three-dimensional sculpture. The closer you get, you realize it's actually a flat facade that is animated by the wind moving these small little sequins, if you will, from side to side. That once again, very site-specific, this is in California, I'm originally from Los Angeles, and I was thinking about image, Hollywood, things that look full and robust, but they're often stage fronts and you know, and so on at the duplicity of that. So on the backside of this pieces actually looks like a large quilt, and in fact, I painted it to look like an anamorphic drawn. So if you're looking at it from the central axis, it looks like a perfectly symmetrical quilt. But when you deviate from that vantage point it starts to fall apart. So once again with a lot about it Asian composition reflection do you see yourself in this piece, the piece is almost bacchanalian. So it's really laid back. It's also in front of a huge Richard Serra that is just … tall and erect. And so I wanted this figure to be bacchanalian, laying on its side, so created a different sort of landscape.

 Gianofer Fields  15:23
So Naima, as we talk about new pieces that are monuments and monumental, how is that changing the landscape of what we're seeing in terms of these large works in public places? 

Naima Murphy Salcido  15:37
I mean, I think even what we've heard already, I think that contemporary artists bring a sense of, you know, that desire of folks to interact with their work or their or knowledge that folks will interact with their work in public. And so there's like a very, there's a very clear sense of that, I find, like, in terms of how the monument landscape changes. The work that we do is both looking ahead at what a monument landscape could be in this country, if we told more stories that represented the society we’re part of, and then also reckoning with what we've inherited. And so and part of that reckoning, certainly includes, you know, recognizing the kind of toxicity and the harm, that a lot of monuments that stand have. In it, it's also part of the reckoning is also acknowledging how folks have worked to reclaim those spaces, whether it's through protest, to remove those monuments, whether it's how they've transformed those monuments with projection, or how the plinths stand on their own and become something brand new.

And I think that those, there's a connection there, both in reckoning with what we have, and a vision looking ahead. I'm proud to be a small part of, you know, working with, with artists and kind of produce prototype monument opportunities, but also seeing across the country, and really world with artists who are saying, you know,these curvatures, these experiences, they, they relate to so many people who see their work, or see their experiences, you know, blown to the monumental scale, and then start to look around their environment a little bit more closely, because they realize, like, that paragraph that you read, Gianofer, like, I think that I relate to that so much, because you could either, you could either be ambivalent to what's around you, because it doesn't feel like it's for you. Or as you start to see more objects that are monumental sculpture, or public works that really are speaking to you, you start to be able to claim more space in public as well, and kind of claim that power that, you know, we have as individuals. 

Gianofer Fields  18:03
And I wonder, does a monument thing have a lifespan? Is it the history of the community that determines the lifespan of the monument or the people who are currently there? Who decides on the lifespan of a monument? 

Sanford Biggers  18:21
I think about this a lot, even when working at a more in interior scale. I think a good work of art has the ability to shape shift over time. There are moments when that same artwork could be in favor and out of favor, as culture evolves around it. So in that sense, when we finish a work, it's not necessarily static, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It actually does evolve as culture evolves, or devolve as culture evolves. So, you know, it's a long game, you don't know exactly how it's going to wind up. What I think is interesting, particularly about a lot of the protests regarding monuments and memorialization is that we've seen so many different things happen, we've seen them be defaced. We've seen the projection, we see them removed, we see them put into water, and people are like what do you think about each of those things? I'm like, I think that is the process itself. We're seeing several different examples of how people were reacting to it. I don't think one. I mean, I prefer some over, you know, other actions. But I think all of them are important for us to start to figure out how do we contend with this, now with these histories?

 Marilu Knode  19:26
And I want to just jump in and say, to your question, that. so much of what we're talking about today, is an evolution away from the 1% laws that were really public process, and these are much more curated activities. And that's partially to get away from the Plop Art phenomenon of the 60s and 70s. Where, you know, you commissioned something for the side of a very ugly corner in a city and it's Plop Art. And it's not that attractive. So I think the fact that we recognize the fact that public art by artists is such a critical way for us to think about the world that we live in, that there's been some sort of, you know, bringing that back into more high-level artistic realm. But I did want to bring up a piece that is in response specifically to the protests in Madison and 2020 at the state capitol, so that the protesters, everybody here, so Madison, probably, you know what happened, they took down Forward, which was a young, idealized woman representing the state. And then, Hague, Christian Hague, a Norwegian immigrant who actually represent who led the Wisconsin contingent during the Civil War, right. So he was for the North. But a lot of the young people, you know, circulating around the Capitol, were really angry that there was nobody there who represented them.

 And so Michael Johnson, head of Boys and Girls Clubs of Dane County, talked to the governor, and the governor set up the Vel Phillips Task Force, and so I'm working with Radcliffe Bailey, the artist to memorialize Vel Phillips, probably the most important female politician, Black woman to be represented, you know, who represents so many different ways of changing the state of Wisconsin. And so there's bipartisan support for this piece to go on the State Capitol, which is, in my mind, unheard of that there's anything bipartisan in the state of Wisconsin right now. And the fact is that they went, they did the public process very differently, they first got bipartisan support, and then they went to approach Radcliffe, just to make sure it would go up. So we'll wait and see what happens next week. We're assuming the pieces still gonna go up. But then once we pass those sort of barriers, the conversation with Radcliffe has been he gave us two maquettes, one of Vel standing like this with their arm outward, you know, sort of reaching out like that. And another of Vel, sitting in a chair, very, very beautiful, minimalist, chaired, based on a photograph. And at first the group was really interested in the standing piece. But does that just mimic the way that we memorialize men now it's like, if it's not a guy on a horse, it's a guy going like this. And so we thought a lot about it, Vel Phillips is sitting in this beautiful, elegant, very attentive posture that she has in the seated piece. And we realized, in fact, that's a different way of exercising power. Vel Phillips represents a new form of power in our state. And so we've all agreed that that's the that's the piece that we want to see on the State Capitol. So it will be Forward idealized woman, Hauge, and then Vel Phillips. And she will be the first woman of color, so honored in any state capitol in the country. So Wisconsin is really doing something to respond to the protests of 2020. And I think that's a really exciting thing for the state.

 Gianofer Fields  22:40
The thing that brings up another issue of partnerships, like creating partnerships. Talk to me, anyone, about the space between conceiving the idea, and then finding partnerships in ways to make it come to fruition. It's a beautiful idea, we’re working on the re:mancipation project here at the Chazen. And so the MASK Consortium, which has been here since Tuesday, and I've been bugging Sanford since Tuesday. And to see what goes on behind the scenes is to me mind-blowing, because either you walked by a sculpture like oh, somebody put it there, you watch a documentary, like, oh, somebody put it there. No, it's Ukachi running all over the place and taking off his shoes and climbing on things to get all these shots and things. And so it's all this sort activity in the background. So talk to me about when you think of an idea, what are those steps? How do you form those partnerships? How do you get that ball rolling?

 Faisal Abdu’Allah  23:36
I mean, I think for me, when I first conceived of Blueprint, it was thinking about why don't we start to have a conversation with these monuments because removing them, actually, there's only one beneficiary, the person who is removing them. And I think that even when they removed them, they moved them to a park somewhere, somebody gets paid to move them there. And somebody else gets paid to pick them up and move them back to another museum. So even when they take the piece and melt it down, they will still say that was General Lee’s ear, or that was his foot. So the name and the monument still lives on, even if it's physically not there. So I was keen to think about creating something, some kind of form, based off a class I did with my students, again, was an empty plinth. And I said, What would your ideal piece be? And I was speaking to the curator at the time, Leah Cole, when she says maybe we can make it out of Styrofoam. Maybe we can if you want to make this large thing. We can speak to Quarra Stone.

And so we went to see Quarra and they were like, yeah, we can do this thing in Styrofoam. But at the same time, Jim and I had, they were looking at how Black hair can be replicated in stone. And they heard that I was a barber. And they said, Oh, we're kind of fascinated by the fact that you're a barber you actually understand hair. Maybe we could think about doing something in stone. And there was a series of conversations backwards and forwards. And I’ll never forget, we went for a walk in the yard. Me, Jim and Heather. And he was pointing out, like the marble and Bianco pieces, different kinds of stone. And then I realized that different stones speak back to you differently, that the marble and the granite, there was no negotiations. And then he, he mentioned limestone, he said, if you look at limestone, you see all these kind of marks, and the imperfections. And that was the thing, that's when the penny dropped, that this thing had to be made of limestone, simply because of the way it was constructed. And then he mentioned about being coming out the ground, soft, and hardens over time. And then backwards and forwards, the different people at Quarra. I mean, Heather was an artist, so that would converse with me all the time about what do you want this piece to be, and then having to translate that to all the craftspeople there. And then watching this thing come out of the ground and go on this machine, it was just an amazing collaboration and watching this arm that carves a piece for 80 hours. And you just watch this block, and eventually see your head, your shoulder, your foot.

But for me, the most moment of enlightenment was flying Martin Foote in, the master carver, to finish the hands in the head. But why that was important to me because it was a similar format, when I'm a barber, because I use the machine to create the flat top or that the Bobby Brown or whatever it is they want. And then I finish it with a razor. So it's almost like the razor that I use, the cut throat, was the metaphor for Martin Foote. And the machine was the robot that does the 80 hours. So for me, that was a wonderful arc of learning for me and collaboration. And knowing what it means when different craftspersons, you know, insert themselves into the into the work. And I always say that Blueprint is not my piece. It's our piece. 

Gianofer Fields  26:56
Sanford that sounds like Wednesday morning. Talk to me about that experience, because how long was a conversation about hair, and Jim learned a very important lesson. You don't ask the Black woman if you can touch her hair. So talk to me about that conversation that went down Wednesday morning. 

 Sanford Biggers  27:16
So very similarly, we were discussing, how would you depict very specifically the hair of Frederick Douglass. And those of you who are familiar with him, there's lots of documentation, there's lots of photographs of him because he really believed as soon as the technology was there to make images of black people that we needed to embrace it quickly. So we can portray ourselves rather than be portrayed by others. So he was a huge advocate of that. And throughout the years, you see his hair go through different phases of textures, basically. And so our conversation was about that. And the thing that struck me as funny is that anybody who's ever done, any type of reimagination, or depiction of Frederick Douglass has had to talk about the hair. Because the hair is such a signature aspect of his his persona, right? So yes, we had a conversation, we were looking at samples that were already done in stone, and like Well, let me go through my phone book right now and see who I know who might have hair like so we can take some pictures. And we can figure that out. Because we know that that is an aspect that we really want to pay some attention to. Because Mark and I have seen several iterations of Frederick Douglass and we're like, the hair on that one is not as good as this one face on this one seems different than this one. And once again, we're comparing that to pictures of different of his different ages. So it became so specific that we're even to the conversation now of talking to a woman who is works in Hollywood and does hair for film, and theater, and so on. So she's worked with several types and she creates hair and wigs and so on. So she really has a hands-on idea of multiple textures as well, just as you would [to Faisal] just by cutting hair, you have a different understanding of the various densities and coarseness and curls and so on. So we're trying to figure that out right now.

 Gianofer Fields  28:59
It was fascinating to see that because when, as you're talking how each piece of the ideal is broken down and how, as a person who approaches a monument on the street, I see the whole thing. Again, I don't think about what it takes to get it there. I don't think about how it got there. I may show up for the actual moving of it to get some sound because it's always cool song when trucked around and things are grinding and growling. But that behind the scenes of what actually it takes to get there. But Naima, Marilu you also have some behind the scenes work that you have to do in order to get a monument where it needs to be, or piece where it needs to be, and also to understand where they are and why they're there. 

Naima Murphy Salcido  29:44
Yeah, I'll jump in. You know, I think as a team, Monument Lab is interesting because we have so many different backgrounds you know, like I come from and arts administration background, we have researchers on our team. We have artists on our team. We have historians on our team. And I think that that's like a microcosm of the of the folks that are impacted by this work. I think that how collaborative it is, is really like reflective of, you know, the vested interests we all have and what happens in public? And so, you know, the inclusion of researchers, for example, is why, like, really most of our projects have a central research question that artists can respond to, that publics can interpret. Whether it's, I think one of the projects right now that we're working on is, what is a story that is missing in public? And so it's always a question we don't know the answer to that we want to hear answers to, and get an understanding of how folks will interact with work, and also that artists can bring those answers are their own answer to life in a major way. And so all of those pieces really inform our work and how we document it. So that, you know, because our projects are not always long lasting, you know, making sure that there's documentation so that there is proof that we were hear that these artists voices were heard that these people's interpretations are acknowledged. And so that takes so many different types of folks, right? Sometimes we're working with city governments, sometimes we're working with community activists, sometimes we're working with, you know, the third-grade class, you know, so really being able to kind of appreciate all the knowledge and, and real desire to be seen that comes from all of those folks. That's it. It's a really, it's so important to have that collaborative spirit.

Marilu Knode  31:49
I would say that I used to see with Sculpture Milwaukee, there was like, for every one of me, there'd be another 100 people, right? So there's the artists, the dealer, the creator, the shipper, the crane operator, the people to block off the street for the crane, you have to figure out if the sidewalks are hollow, you're all going to collapse the city, there are all these other sort of considerations to think about. But, you know, I came from a more traditional museum background and in working in the public realm for the last, you know, almost two decades. One of the biggest I think, challenges for public art programs is, you know, if you go into a museum, you've already self-selected, you're there to see the art. You know who you are, you have an idea of what you're going to see. With public art, the problem is, how do you actually track any sort of impact the artist might have on the on the public? So if you drive your car by fast and your eyeball glances at something is that engagement? And so the word when I hear people say engage, we want the public to engage, I don't want you to climb on the work because it just damages it, for the most part, not exclusively. And so the work actually sort of talking to your audience is so critical. 

When it's about public art, you want to explain what you're doing, you want to put it in context for the things around you. And I find that really very exciting. So when I was in St. Louis, we would partner with people all across the community. We started a program called Loans That Don't Move, so that we could actually insinuate ourselves into the Missouri history museum, and who had like a giant tugboat in their collection, we would do all these kinds of crazy things, simply to sort of expand our audience and to sort of create this feedback loop. But I think education is really one of the hardest things when you're actually, you know, trying to engage people in public art, what was here before, if anything? And how does this relate to your life? And I think that's, that's the thing that's most interesting to me.

Sanford Biggers  33:38
An aside, but related, when we did the Oracle project at Rockefeller Center, a lot of people don't realize this, but we had an interactive element to that, which was basically a QR code that if you scan, it will lead you to a site and a few times, you know, maybe once a week or so it was sort of random times, you could consult the oracle, and the oracle was voiced by Meshell Ndegeocello, you know, fantastic musician. And oracles typically in the past and antiquity were actually women. And they would speak in, you know, basically profound and enigmatic phrases, that people would have to figure out the meaning for themselves. So you could go online, and you can ask Meshell questions, and she would respond to you. So that was one way that we were trying to not only track some of the viewership, but also allow people who weren't in New York City to engage with a piece so that once again, it was sort of an active relationship, not a passive relationship with the work and also thinking about the behind the scenes. It was amazing to be on Fifth Avenue at two in the morning, where they blocked off the street. All the lights were purple, there was a mist and then a flatbed truck came with three huge pieces, and they erected this whole thing you know with cranes and everything and then somebody went inside where there's a ladder and had to bolt and weld from inside and the crawl out from beneath, under basically a stage. So there's a lot of coordination choreography to get these things done. And you know, could be hundreds of people involved with any, you know, any type of installation of this scale. 

Gianofer Fields  35:13
So Sanford, both you and Faisal work and multimedia. Talk to me, is it, what determines how you create the piece? Is it the idea? Is it the placement of the piece? Is it the lifespan of the piece? At what point does the material come in, of what you're going to do to create these pieces?

Faisal Abdu’Allah  35:35
I think for me, you know, whether it's a piece in the public sphere or a piece that's in the sacrosanct space, it's always, you know, charged through from the idea. And for me, the idea needs to sit in a particular kind of vessel or form. So, you know, in the inside MMoCA I’ve got a gold-plated, 24-karat Koch barber chair. And people are thinking, Well, why have you got a solitary barber chair inside the space? Again, I'm speaking bodily about what it was like, as a five year old kid, going to these, you know, barber shops in people's homes in the 70s. And that being my first university of learning, and so I'm sitting there, I'm six years old. And my father said, you're seen and you're not heard. So I'm observing and watching everybody in the room listening to all their little exploits. And my dad says, block your ears. And I have my Black Panther comic on my sketchbook and I'm drawing. So for me that moment, and that space of experiential learning, and how important that was, and the preciousness of that and how I was able to transition as a young person in you know, in 1970s, England, had to be represented in some kind of artifact that was magical and talismanic in a way. And that's how the piece came into existence. And I apply the same kind of approach, whatever it is, I want to make, you know.

Sanford Biggers  36:59
Same for me. It’s really the idea happens first. And then it's a process of translating that into a material that I think speaks to the idea. And then you deal with some of the practical issues, how's this going to live? How long can it be outside? What is this installation is it two months is two years, and then that starts to you know, be introduced into the conversation. But for the most part, for me, at least working outside it, I have like a palette of five or six materials that I would go to, that I know can translate it. And sometimes I look at these as opportunities to make an experiment like the piece in Orange County, that's material that, to my knowledge, not many people have used for sculptural ends, it comes from a different world of design and advertising. So I'm often doing some R&D and seeing what has already happened in architecture or design or other industries, where I can use some of those materials and do the same thing I would with found objects in the studio, find a way to assemble them together and make them work for the ends of the for the full installation, you have to last that time.

Gianofer Fields  38:04
So Marilu, talk to, talk to us about then the considerations and placing objects that may be out of non-traditional materials.

Marilu Knode  38:14
So that's the really fun thing in a way about actually critiquing the idea of monumentation. So one year at Sculpture Milwaukee, people complained, oh, these works aren’t big enough, we couldn't see them. And you think okay, well, we'll figure that out. We I commissioned Carlos Rowland to wrap an entire building with vinyls on the outside. So it was like a four-story building, downtown Milwaukee. And what was interesting about it, he was also critiquing the sort of the growth of international style. It was like re-col, was like another form of colonization with this sort of architectural form. That meant one thing in Europe between the wars, but in America, it means something very different that we that was sort of spread around the globe. And also I did a video one year, people just couldn't wrap their heads around that. Also lighting conditions are difficult to deal with. But one year we had an artwork by Jason Yee, it was PVC pipe that somebody couple people took apart. The following year, I actually got a spray-painted artwork for the side, for the sidewalk, actually. But it was a piece that critiqued the idea of shadow culture, and how an image like David, Michelangelo's David, haunts artists and in way, if you're a sculptor, is like you always have to pay attention to that figurative sculpture, David, I mean, you can't get away from it. You can get around it, how do you critique it? How do you do something very different. People didn't understand the spray paint on the floor either, but it meant nobody damaged it. And that was a really very good discovery as well. So in some ways, you know, we're when we're dealing with public art, you have to continually experiment figure out what's the way to solve this problem. How do we support artists? Artists can do anything. They're such smart people. How do you actually find a way to solve these kinds of questions?

Naima Murphy Salcido  40:03
Yeah, I'm thinking about that too. Because in, in our work, we've found ourselves, you know, in all of the research about monuments that exist, you know, we found ourselves being like, well, you know, monuments have always changed, right, like even Ball’s work. You know, we learned yesterday how that that monument has changed over time and how it requires money and mindsets and material, you know, knowledge of material to be maintained. And so a lot of times on our team, we're often thinking about the idea that if monuments are always changing, like what does it mean to play around with materials in meaningful ways. In our city-wide exhibition in 2017, in Philadelphia, one of the 20 artists featured, Tania Bruguera, her work was meant to deteriorate. You know, it was meant to, over time have different interactions with the public, to you could come back and see it change over time. And it's still having this lasting impact. Certainly on all of us, but, you know, a lot of folks who are able to see it and think about the relationship at had to, you know, the immigration crisis, which she was, what she was reflecting on. And so I think that, that idea of, you know, how will the public interact? How will the weather impact this? I think it's, it's opened the doors for a lot of different ways to use materiality. That's, that's just personally really, really exciting. And also really turns on its head a little bit like, what does it mean to be monumental? Is it large? Is it the lasting effect? Is it is it seeing yourself as powerful in it, it's probably all of those things to a degree, but I think it's there's a really kind of, you know, exciting intersection of those pieces.

 Marilu Knode  42:01
I wanted to say one thing, at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, we had a piece by Ursula von Riydingsvard, an important minimalist artist using nature in her work. And one of the things that was true for her piece is that when you skin a tree and hollow it out, it's not going to last forever. And I think a lot of museums and sculpture parks are having to deal with the fact that you have to build into your contract, the fact that the piece may have to be decommissioned at some point, and not de-accessioned, decommissioned, which means this work doesn't represent the artists intention any longer. We can't, you know, the artist doesn't feel happy about it. We don't, we don't have the resources to, we can't restore it, we can't rebuild it. And so there's a process by which you sort of help it go away. And what I find very radical about that, is that the myth that we have in America today about things lasting forever, it's like you're an insurance adjuster, right? You're always say, if you have to really sort of life-proof everything that you do in your world, that's impossible. And so we have to have that sort of flexibility to understand monuments change, we all change, the world changes. And I think that that's an important thing for us to recognize, you know that things get torn down, maybe they're put back up, maybe they're not, but the meaning can change.

 Sanford Biggers  43:16
Yeah, one of my first monumental scale works was done in Harlem, and it was a 20-foot by 40-foot  prayer rug, basically, but it was made out of colored sand. So I worked with a team. And basically around 300 hours later, we had poured and sifted by hand or by tools, colored sand to create this very intricate prayer rug on the floor. And during the opening of the exhibition, people were standing around it and walking around, and, and so on. And at some point, a friend of mine’s daughter, somehow got afraid of something and you know, wanted to run to her mom and literally ran across the entire piece. And, you know, she was so light and so fast that she just didn't smudge. The entire place, there was like a collective gasp, because people were freaking out. I had already taken pictures, so I was fine. But you know, prior to that, I'd lived in Japan for three years, and I had, you know, done a lot of hanging out with some monks and watching the sand mandalas being made. So I wanted to bring that experience there. But the funny thing about it is at the end of that exhibition, the whole thing was swept up, and we you know, dispersed into a body of water. But people still talk about that. That project, which was like 2001 or 2002. And I find that the memory is more important and probably lasts longer, obviously, than the sand on the ground. And every time people will recall the story, it gets better and better. So. So there's lots of ways for these pieces to last even beyond their physicality.

Gianofer Fields  44:46
You walked right into my next question. Thank you. My background is art history, material culture. So I think about people's relationship with objects and things. And it's difficult for me in the beginning, it was difficult for me to talk about an object without having it in my hand. When I realized when I started to connect with objects that would establish it for me that had some history with me and my past, I could go on, like I normally do about everything for hours about something that I probably hadn't seen or touched in 20 years. So talk to me about that idea of, is it the monument? Is it the object? Or is it the story, because your stories about your barber chair, are so intimate and so powerful that whether or not I've seen the work, and I have, I still have that sense memory of what's that's like, because I went every Friday with my father, to the barbershop. And that's why I learned to listen. And I learned what was grown folks’ business and what not to repeat. So that idea of is, do you really, truly need that object to be permanent for the story to have a long life beyond that? Anybody? 

Marilu Knode  45:52
And it's such an interesting question. Because before writing it was, we were all oral culture. So there's something interesting about that. And, and the fact that, you know, we have, they've always been monuments to some degree, you know, ancient peoples were making monuments because they wanted to create a ritual space or mark time, whatever it might be. But I think the fact that memory sometimes is the most valuable thing, it really can be.

Naima Murphy Salcido  46:17
Yeah, you know, I think being amidst like, monument work, you know, as someone who was previously kind of ambivalent to monuments has always been interesting to me. And part because I know that my stories, my family stories live somewhere else. And, you know, to that point of like, the storytelling, the oral histories, the dinner tables, the you know, the experiences that kind of continue on is where a lot of that is. So it never is just start and finish with, with a monument. But the monument is part of that process of, of telling stories. You know, I think about a project we did in North Philadelphia, in 2021, called Staying Power. Where we, the that central research question was, what is the staying power in your neighborhood, in a city that's rapidly changing? This is a neighborhood in Philly, that was feeling is feeling the pressure and weight of rapid gentrification. And so that idea of staying power amidst the pandemic, you know, was really important.

And so, one of the prototype monuments was, were featured photos by Deb Willis, you know, particularly focused on women, women, at work, women, on businesses, whether it was the candy shop, where a lot of folks learn how to count, or, you know, the dress shop, you know, where folks got their sweet 16 dresses, you know, that those stories, even an image spoke volumes, and I brought my mother to the, to the opening, and she was like, I know, like, my mom's new to Philly, you know, and she was like, I know, these women like I have you actually related to that in her way. And so, I think, that transcended and even being able to document it and have those images live on even at like, at a large scale, constructed on scaffolding, you know, in a in a community park, you know, it really, it was really powerful to kind of continue the ways that our stories are shared. So, I mean, I really think that the monument is part of that storytelling, but we know we have to know that our stories exist outside of, of these of these figures and statues as well.

 Faisal Abdu’Allah  48:42
I'm growing up as a as a young person in London. You know, my parents came from Jamaica. So I was born in London. So my other siblings, they're all born in Jamaica. So all I had was their stories, and memories. Then all I had was my imagination to make these things up. And there were some practices that they bought to London. So for example, the hot comb. And I know you're doing this.

Gianofer Fields
I have a scar. Right?

Faisal Abdu’Allah 
Right, right. So I'm a six year old kid. I'm walking downstairs and I'm what's that smell? So I look and there's my two sisters, one sitting on a chair. And the other one I see the gas stove on, and there's this red-hot object on the gas stove. And I see are picking it up. I'm like, oh my goodness gracious. And she puts it in her head. And I see all this steam. And that was a smell. So you know, there were certain objects or certain smells, though certain stories that I had no visual reference, other than what my parents would tell me. And then they would tell me about what it was like coming into the UK going into these rental properties in Notting Hill gate. And it was only by the, you know, the grace of the Jewish landlord, Rachman, that they were able to rent properties, but they said they would see a sign No Irish no Dogs, no Blacks. So there are certain reference points that are inculcated in my memory that will somehow find their way out in the world, in some kind of solid state, some kind of form to help me navigate, you know, their histories. So in some ways my entire practice is given their ideas form, or given their early thoughts form, given their stories form. So I think storytelling is really important.

 Gianofer Fields  50:29
I think, you know, Sanford I was looking at you, because you look like you had something to say,

Sanford Biggers  50:35
Well, I mean, I think I'm still figuring out my relationship between permanence and impermanence. When thinking about projects, you know, I already mentioned the piece with the sand. So that was obviously, you know, ephemeral. I grew up doing graffiti in Los Angeles. And anytime you put a piece up, you knew somebody could come right around and just deface it. I've worked with antique quilts, and I'm painting directly on them, which some people consider defacement and other people consider embellishment. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of these were being thrown out. So they would have been gone, unless they became part of this, you know, artistic intervention, and then cycle through all those materials all the way to working in marble and work in bronze, which are supposedly, you know, permanent works. And I think all of that, for me is just sort of like a long experiment to figure out what does leave an impact and what does that impact mean, and how does that shift? I don't think we can predict it all.

So that's why I still talk about it in terms of experimentation. Documentation becomes important because at least we know this thing happened. But how does it really reside in people, on people, on a cellular level? You know, the verdict is still out for me. But I, I am still interested in that dance between permanence and impermanence. And for people to think about that, because, in essence, it is a metaphor for our life.

Gianofer Fields  51:53
Yeah. And I'm also interested in how you have that dialogue with the public in your work. These are intimate, your intimate knowledge, your intimate memories, how do you create a dialogue with the public in the work then?

Faisal Abdu’Allah  52:06
I mean, I think one of the things that I, I do, I think I did it here when I first came in 2014 is this thing called Life Salon, where, you know, I have a barber chair, place it in the middle of the museum. And I caught somebody saying, we have a conversation. And for me, it's one of the most tender, disarming things were some of the most obscure, people will come up, and they will start talking. And I've done it all over the world. I've done it in probably four or five continents, and it elicits the same kind of response. It really disarms the really kind of, you know, sterile, you know, snooty art environment, because everybody can find a part of themselves in the piece, just by sitting, listening and being present. And I think, you know, that's one way that I think that either permanence and impermanence factors into my own work, because our hair is always growing, it's always moving. And it keeps, gives us the trace of our ancestors. And what we learned in COVID, that hair always wins. People are laughing, but they know it's true. You know, they today couldn't color those roots. They couldn't straighten the hair out. They couldn't hide that bald patch. And the hair wins and it's something beautiful that your ancestors come and visit you at that moment. So I think that notion of Life Salon is a way that I try to keep myself connected and almost in step with the public.

Gianofer Fields  53:32
Is there anything that any of you would like to tell us that I haven't asked you yet?

Sanford Biggers
Vote.

Gianofer Fields  53:53
Thank you.

You been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. This episode featured a live panel discussion entitled "Monuments Reimagined: Contemporary Artists as Changemakers.” Meet Me at the Chazen is a production of the Chazen Museum of Art on the campus of UW–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information about the museum, its collections and exhibitions, visit chazen.wisc.edu I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Thank you for listening.