queens of queens

A successful and meaningful work of public art is one that speaks directly to the community in which it exists. I wanted the message of my monument proposal to depict as many personal histories as possible. This led me to think about a conversation our class had about portraiture, and who we would choose to commission a piece for, if we could choose any one woman in history. Almost all of the students resonated with the idea of having a portrait of our mother/ mother figures. Though we had all grown up in different environments, and have individual family histories, the idea of honoring the mother figures in our lives felt meaningful. That being said, it was difficult to conceptualize a symbolic representation of motherhood (which, in many ways, is so individualized) that could resonate with an entire public.

There are exemplifications of motherhood portrayed through monuments and public statues dating back to antiquity. Marleen B. Flory’s article, “Livia and the History of Public Honorific Statues for Women in Rome”, focuses specifically on the respective statues of Queens Livia and Octavia in Rome (circa 35 B.C. and 9 B.C.), and the meaning behind their presence in the city. The first statue of Livia was brought on by the death of Drusus, one of her sons, who was a powerful and well respected figure in Rome at the time. Flory writes that “one way in which a statue or statues might have offered consolation to Livia was in honoring her as a mother whose child was of such value to the state that she deserved public recognition.” [1]

Another representation of motherhood through public memorialization can be found in the Temple to Demeter at Pergamon. Within this temple stood a memorial to Queen Apollonis, commissioned by her sons Eumenes II and Attalos II, who rose to prominence as celebrated wartime heroes. In “The Sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon: Architecture and Dynasty in the Early Attalaid Capital”, author Cornelie Piok Zanon notes that “dedications to Demeter by men were not uncommon, but they were often made as family dedications, that is, on behalf of one’s mother or children, as husband and wife, or as a family”. [2] In both of these ancient examples, the achievements of a woman were dependent on the actions of her son(s). There was little to no focus on the celebration of motherhood in a broader context. I wanted to maintain the idea of staging a monument that speaks directly to the place in which it is placed, but I also knew that I didn’t want to try to tell this story through the body of some singular figure who has been deemed an ‘authority’ in the history that is being represented, as had been exemplified through Apollonis, Livia, and Octavia.

Monument Lab was a significant source of inspiration for me as I was conceptualizing my ideas. The project, “Civic Studio On Public Space” (Philadelphia, 2018) piqued my interest, because it allowed members of the community at large to submit proposals for a monument that they felt would represent their city, having a direct input on what sort of stories they wanted to be told.In their description regarding the motivations behind the project, Monument Lab explains that “Philadelphia is a city full of monuments and memorials. Philadelphia is also a city full of monumental histories, many of which are little known, obscured, or simply unacknowledged. These underrepresented histories often exist in tension with officially acknowledged narratives.” The project served as a reminder that most public artworks and monuments are conceptualized by a small group of people, often members of local or state governments. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that the pieces created don’t represent the area in a meaningful way, it does shed light on the fact that the decisions for an entire community are often based on a very limited (and typically not very diverse) amount of opinions/ voices.

In terms of materiality, the respective works of Theaster Gates and Vanessa German also helped me develop my ideas. Both artists use ‘found’ or pre existing materials as the medium for their art. The objects that come together to form the piece often have embedded meanings in of themselves, and as they come together, work to tell stories that apply to a larger narrative (for Gates, the ongoing project Dorchester Industries utilizes material taken from abandoned buildings in the South Side of Chicago to confront his audience with the systemic neglect of the neighborhood, and simultaneously celebrating the community that exists there. For German, the pieces exhibited in Things Are Not Always What They Seem: A Phenomenology of Black Girlhood (2018) various found objects come together to symbolically represent the experiences and sentiments of being a young black woman in America). It is within this format that I began to understand that I wanted to represent motherhood as a bequeathment of values and knowledge, told through the format of everyday, recognizable objects.

The next step of my process was to determine where I wanted to situate this monument. I wanted to focus on a borough that does not have (or historically has not had) much acknowledgement in the way of commissions for public art. I also wanted to place these pieces in diverse neighborhoods, because the majority of currently existing monuments in the city depict white (cis/male) figures. I focused specifically on four neighborhoods: Flushing, which has a prominent East Asian population (Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean), Jackson Heights (which has significant Middle Eastern/ South Asian/ Central and South American communities), Woodside (known as the little Filipines of NYC), and Astoria (which houses large Greek and Eastern European communities). The monuments would be placed in front of the New World Mall, Travers Park, a small (unnamed) park-area on Roosevelt Avenue, and Astoria Park, respectively.

The first step of the creation of the monument, which I named “Queens of Queens” would encourage members of the community to contribute an object or artifact that represents a memory of their mothers/mother figures. Every day there would be an allocated slot of time in which one of the administrators of the project would collect the objects. Once enough material is accumulated to build the sculpture, the objects would be bonded together in a cylindrical shape. This would be protected by two sheets of plexiglass and embellished with two handles at the top of the cylinder, mimicking the look of a large cooking pot. I chose this form for a few two main reasons. Firstly, in considering the symbols and associations that encompass motherhood that could be as universally understandable as possible, I resonated with the idea of food and being fed- a job that is often undertaken by the mothers/mother figures in one’s childhood. Food is also a tool for ritual and tradition, representing the passing down of histories and cultures down to next generations.