"Between Monuments" - Triumphal Column Series, 2019. Rose Desiano
Artist Rose Desiano, an alum of the Department of Photography & Imaging, has an outdoor installation on display at Brooklyn's Old Stone House, a 1933 reconstruction of the 1699 Vechte–Cortelyou House (336 3rd St, Brooklyn). The installation is part of "Race and Revolution: Reimagining Monuments," a series curated by Katie Fuller that aims to bring the conversation of systemic race and racism from the past into the present by displaying excerpts from historical documents alongside contemporary artworks. It will be on view through June 14, 2019.
From Rose's exhibition text:
The experience of monuments in public space creates a city-wide dialogue. Public monuments create a narrative, a nonlinear tale of our histories, that is often inaccurate and fabled. This work looks to address the responsibility of a city to create an informed dialogue with its markers and monuments, one that takes stock in who it is serving and what message it is spreading. By documenting monuments in our landscape and then re-contextualizing them through shifts in scale and juxtapositions of landscape photography, museum dioramas, and archival footage, this work allows these often dated and problematic monuments to tell a different tale, venerating the marginalized and unsung stories of our past.
"Between Monuments" - Triumphal Column Series
Plexi Mirror, UV protected Dye-sublimation photos on cured adhesive vinyl
32" D x 98" H
2019
The first in a series of triumphal columns that explores the less told stories of historical figures represented in American monuments. Theodore Roosevelt is flanked by a diorama representation of Native Americans; George Washington stands over a field with the lifeless body of a Red Coat soldier; Frederick Law Olmsted is next to the Lyons, members of Seneca Village, an African-American community which Olmsted leveled to create Central Park; Robert Moses is confronted by Jane Jacobs and protesters of the neighborhoods he destroyed. There are many untold tales that happen between these monuments.
Monuments selection from "Empirical Data and other fabrications"
Mirror, Dye-sublimation cling
32" W x 71"H
2018
Selected are two panels from a larger series that depict Frederick Douglas and a Native American. In both cases, the original statues are small in scale and installed in remote areas of NYC. This series allows me to bring grandeur to these statues by representing them on the same scale as other well known and larger NYC monuments.