Event
Gates, Borders, Barriers
28 Aug 2022
Columbus Plaza
Brooklyn, United States
The final program in the series brings practitioners of different art forms and academic disciplines together to explore how we’re to feel about our history in America, whether there is positive potential in shame, and the role that art plays.
About the Program
The final program in Of Manacles and Monuments series brings practitioners of different art forms and academic disciplines together to explore how we’re to feel about our history in America, whether there is positive potential in shame, and the role that art plays. Artists Fred Wilson, Nona Faustine, and Dread Scott, activist and scholar Salamishah Tillet, writer Akiba Solomon, who co-authored How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance, join this conversation.
About Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is a public artwork by Fred Wilson, commissioned by More Art and currently on view in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn. Wilson’s first ever large-scale public artwork, it features a 10-foot-tall sculpture composed of layers of decorative ironwork and statues of Siibele/Senufo “rhythm pounder” figures. The ornamental gates and fences act as a metaphor for security and insecurity and graphically reference mass incarceration. The title of the work borrows from William Blake’s concept of “Mind Forg’d Manacles”—self-created barriers to personal and societal growth and freedom, built by fear, division, and perceptions of difference. Located just a few short blocks from the Center for Brooklyn History, program attendees are encouraged to visit the artwork. Click here for Google Maps.
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