"In February, I was at my computer refreshing the National Park Service webpage for the Stonewall National Monument in New York City with a sense of foreboding. By Valentine's Day, the agency had quietly removed the "T" and "Q" in "LGBTQ+" from descriptions of the site's significance. Designated in 2016, Stonewall is the first United States landmark dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights and history."
"As a nonbinary and transgender artist who has spent more than two decades making work about systems of power that circulate around sex and gender, the removal landed like a direct threat. So I did what artists do: I responded in my studio. Using salvaged building materials removed during the renovation of the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, I constructed a six-foot-tall (~1.8-meter-tall) letter, titled " Capital T," a literal restoration of what the federal government attempted to disappear."
A federal agency removed the "T" and "Q" from "LGBTQ+" on the Stonewall National Monument webpage, erasing transgender and queer recognition in the site's description. Stonewall remains the first United States landmark dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights and history. A nonbinary and transgender artist built a six-foot-tall sculpture titled " Capital T" from salvaged materials from the original Stonewall Inn dance floor to physically restore the omitted letter. The artist joined Fall of Freedom, a decentralized creative resistance movement organizing artists and cultural workers for nationwide events defending civil liberties.
Read at Hyperallergic
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