Monumental: Part Two with Lava Thomas and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
Free and open to the public; online only.
Please register at https://berkeley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yHwAQEkTTM-l_nTIgb7IDg
Interdisciplinary visual artists Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle and Lava Thomas will continue their November discussion regarding the dismantling of hegemonic factors within public art selection and looking at who determines what is “monumental.” Together they will continue to unpack the problematic elements within public art commissions and artwork removal, and the lifelong impact that cycles of commissioning have upon communities. How do monuments that are both erected and dismantled impact the geographies where they are placed? What narratives do they continually assert within their presence and absences? How does one create a monument that begins to balance the scales of history? How do we reimagine the possibilities for monuments in the face of insistence upon historical amnesia / purposeful forgetting?
Whether creating memorials to victims of racial violence, illuminating the labor of women in the struggle for equality, or stretching the conventions of portraiture and representation, Thomas’s practice amplifies ideas that center visibility, resilience, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression. Her oeuvre spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, exploring the events, figures and movements that inform and shape our individual and collective histories.
Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the “Historical Present,” as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Hinkle is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice.