Wallpaper*

Across decades of photography, installation and performance, @carriemaeweems has returned to the structures through which power and memory become visible, from photographing herself among Rome’s monumental architecture for her Roaming series to Contested Sites of Memory, which used the decommissioning of Confederate statues in Richmond, Virginia, to examine the narratives surrounding monuments. ‘What happens to a man who has been celebrated in some way, but there is no monument built in his name?’ she asked during the performance, recalling her grandfather Frank Weems.

Now, that enquiry moves into public space with 250 and Change (@250andchange). Launched by Weems’ nonprofit artist collective Social Studies 101 on 4 July, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, the travelling project invites 50 artists, representing each state, to create 50 original ‘monuments for a future’. Over the next two years, their maquettes, sculptures, paintings, scale models and sketches will travel across the country in containers designed by Elizabeth Diller, co-founder of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (@diller_scofidio_renfro), stopping at cultural institutions, museums, universities and public spaces. It turns the monument from something fixed into something that travels, asking what should be remembered, what deserves space, and what a monument might become in 21st-century America. In our October Guest Editors’ issue, American art advisor and writer @charlesguice considers Weems’ work, from Roaming and The Shape of Things to 250 and Change.

Read the full story via the link in bio or at wallpaper.com.

(2) The Cool Blue Wind at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago (courtesy of the Obama Foundation)
(3) The Shape of Things, Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2021, photographed by Stephanie Berger and Dan Bradica
(4) Contested Sites of Memory at New York’s Lincoln Center, photographed by Tate Horan
(5) 250 and Change, the travelling public art project by Social Studies 101

📷: @carriemaeweems
🖊: @charlesguice