In a section of North
Philadelphia, near an underpass and up
a soaring stoop painted sky blue, Ms Nandi’s home is decorated with pictures of
civil rights heroes and political icons —
Malcolm X, Queen Nefertiti,
Lenin.
Here, for some 20 years, Denise Muhammad, known by everyone as Ms Nandi, and
her husband, Khalid, ran an afternoon penny candy store for the neighborhood’s
children out of their front living room, but it did much more than sell Tootsie
Rolls.
اضافة اعلان
If the children could not count their change, the couple
taught them. If they could not read a quotation from Marcus Garvey on the wall,
they helped them learn to read. “Ask any child in the neighborhood where Ms
Nandi’s house is,” she said on a recent afternoon. “They’ll know.”
Ms Nandi is a pillar of the community many residents call
Fairhill-Hartranft, and one of the inspirations behind a new exhibition there
called “Staying Power.” The show, which opened May 1 across several green
spaces, features a series of homegrown monuments by artists to the residents
who have helped to lift citizens in these communities, where the life
expectancy is low, incarceration levels are high, and gentrification is now
displacing people.
Not granite or bronze, these new monuments by Deborah
Willis, Sadie Barnette, Ebony G. Patterson, Courtney Bowles and Mark
Strandquist, and Black Quantum Futurism, consist of outdoor sculptures and
photography, storefront activations and performances. When I visited before the
opening, banners were being unfurled, lights strung up, and the parks swept of
debris.
“This is a place to understand how residents over many
generations sustained staying power despite systemic forces undermining them,”
says Paul Farber, director of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based public art and
research studio dedicated to examining how history is told in the public
landscape.
Monument Lab has conceived and organized the exhibition
alongside residents and the Village of Arts and Humanities — an arts nonprofit
that runs cultural programs and stewards several parks in the area.
The story of Ms Nandi’s candy store has informed at least
three of the installations in “Staying Power.” Barnette has created a
fantastical living room in a storefront along Germantown Avenue, the
neighborhood’s commercial corridor. It is an homage to “the institution of
family living rooms,” as a place of solace and healing during times of crisis,
Barnette said. Patterson has created a series of banners featuring headless
women against richly patterned backgrounds, honoring those who nurtured
community but who nonetheless suffered violence and trauma.
Willis, who grew up some 25 blocks from Fairhill-Hartranft,
photographed female entrepreneurs and their homes, including a baker, Tamyra
Tucker; an event organizer, Aisha Chambliss — and Ms Nandi.
When artists Bowles and Strandquist began considering the
idea of staying power, they took a different approach, asking, “who is
missing?” The pair collaborated with five women — four of them formerly
incarcerated — to create a sculpture that celebrates their ongoing crusade to
end life sentences in Pennsylvania. The women’s images appear in commanding
portraits, displayed around a crown-like structure, while 200 lights hang above
them — a memorial to the women still serving life sentences, 54 of whom are
from Philadelphia.
If Bowles and Strandquist’s work represents dozens of
Philadelphia women, Black Quantum Futurism, the Afro-futurist collective
created by social practice artists Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa, is
hoping their monument will capture voices from the neighborhood and beyond.
Taking the form of a 7-foot (2.1 meters) grandmother clock, the towering form
houses an oral history booth where residents can record their stories and share
their desires for the future. It is, in effect, a monument that listens.
“Staying Power” is giving a platform to local voices in
other ways: It includes a whole gamut of programs, performances and research
initiatives — including one led by Ms Nandi, who as a paid curatorial fellow
will be interviewing families about their experiences of home-schooling
children during the pandemic.
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