MONUMENT
In the summer of 2020, the killing of George Floyd by a Police Officer in Minneapolis sparked a new wave of nationwide demonstrations and rallies raising awareness and demanding changes; to end American systemic racism and police brutality against people of color. It also reignited the debate around the hundreds of Confederate monuments that dominate the landscape of the American South. These conversations, legal debates, and the social unrest around the Confederate Army monuments and plazas have occurred many times since the end of the Civil War (more than 150 years ago) and usually follow tragic hate crimes, police brutality cases or are part of broader civil rights campaigns.
As an artist and an educator with a long history of interest in and previous work done around the topics of memory, memorials, monuments and trauma in The Middle East, Europe, Asia, and America, I found myself driving more than 12 hours to Richmond, Virginia to photograph dozens of Confederate monuments and the civil unrest in this southern state capital. It was a sudden and an urgent matter as these statues were in the process of losing their ground amongst a heated debate about their visual content, purpose, locations, and future. This body of work was first published by KGP+ Publishing (New York) in 2024.
