"In 2017, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, voted to remove an enormous bronze statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee-the result of a countrywide reckoning with the legacy of slavery in the US. The decision led to a violent rally dubbed Unite the Right, where white supremacists (including Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen) descended on the downtown park where the monument stood, terrorising antiracist counter-protesters. The clash left one woman dead and many others injured."
"Six years later, Monuments-co-curated by Walker, Simpson and the artist Kara Walker-takes place at both Moca and the Brick. The exhibition places decommissioned monuments borrowed from numerous Southern municipalities, including Charlottesville, in dialogue with a selection of existing and newly commissioned contemporary works of art. "These monuments have so many stories to tell," Simpson says. "There's a lot about American history that can be learned from considering them.""
In 2017 Charlottesville voted to remove a large bronze statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, triggering the violent Unite the Right rally that killed one woman and injured many. President Donald Trump’s comment that there were "very fine people on both sides" intensified national attention. Curator Hamza Walker proposed an exhibition after a wave of monument removals and approached the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2019. Monuments opens on 23 October in Los Angeles, curated by Walker, Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker, and brings nearly 20 decommissioned Southern monuments into dialogue with contemporary artworks. Some monuments appear fragmented or vandalised while others remain intact, and a majority honour Confederate figures, prompting public reassessment of history, memory and artistic value.
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