Art

Connecticut Memorial to Victims of State Violence

Photograph of monument with plaques listing names of those killed by police in Connecticut

For this project, I created two plaques honoring those killed by the police in Connecticut, which I installed on a monument stone in Chatham Square in New Haven, CT. The spaces on this monument had been left empty after the original plaques were stolen. My memorial only remained in situ for a short time before being removed.

Here Lies

Silkscreen print of grave plot diagram. White ink on black paper

A series of silkscreen prints depicting burial plots belonging to slave holders in the historic Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, SC. Magnolia Cemetery is said to have the highest concentration of enslavers' graves, but no marker indicates this legacy. Instead, the burial ground proudly displays monuments to its Confederate heritage and grave sites are frequently decorated in the Confederate flag. Here Lies reveals the location of enslavers’ grave sites with x-ray precision, while speaking to the obfuscation of history occurring within the cemetery walls.

Hospital de los Sensitivos

Silkscreen print with red cross shape and black text overlaid.

A set of three double sided silkscreen prints on vellum created for an exhibition at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The piece encapsulates the dual functions of the center: as a memorial for the Puerto Rican poet and activist Clemente Soto Velez and as a community art space. The red cruciform shape on the back side of each print is taken from the flag of the separatist Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, of which Clemente Soto Velez was a member.Printed on the front-facing side of each piece of semi-transparent vellum are excerpts taken from artist applications for studio space in the Center. These excerpts bemoan the lack of affordable space in the rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, reflect on the changes they have witnessed in their neighborhood, and in often pleading terms appeal for studio space at the Center. The title “Hospital de los Sensitivos” comes from the name of an avant-garde literary group in the 1920s, of which Soto Velez was a member. Hospital de Los Sensitivos visualizes the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center as a “Hospital for the Sensitive”–for those artists who seek a cure within the walls of the Center from the ravages of gentrification and the precarity of creative pursuits.

National Register of Historic Places

Photograph of a handmade landmark plaque hanging on a concrete wall

Consists of ten handmade plaques placed in ten locations in Brooklyn. These plaques state the designation of each site as possessing “national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America” and provide a few facts explaining this historical significance. These facts are all accurate and based on research conducted at libraries and archives, but the designation itself is false. In designating my own historic landmarks and marking them with fabricated plaques, I question how historical memory is recorded through our built environment, one of most visceral ways we experience the past.