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As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, twin sisters Anika Grant and Nandi Jordan are diving deep into the past while envisioning possibilities for the future with their public art series focused on Black women in Revolutionary War-era New Jersey.
“Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds,” a traveling installation that is part of Monument Lab’s “Revolutionary Acts” performance and public art series, will invite people to learn more about Black women during that time period at historic sites in Camden, Fort Lee and Trenton.
The idea is to bring history to life, said Jordan, an artist and sociologist, while “really holding space for these Black women whose experiences might not be even recorded, and then making connections between these women and things we’re experiencing today.”
Jordan said part of the challenge in the research she and Grant are working on now is encountering gaps in archives and historical records because the lives of Black women were “purposefully hidden, obscured.”
But the goal of the series, she said, is to “think of absence as presence.”
“Just because we go in our archive and don’t see the name of somebody and their birth date and their death date and what they did for a living doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist,” she said.
Set to take place this fall, the daylong events in each of the three sites will provide an encounter with those gaps in histories for people of all backgrounds, Grant said.
Building on Jordan’s research, Grant will use her experience as founder and CEO of New Jersey-based Idlewild Experiential to design the events, which may include tea rituals, ceremonial sculpture, site-based performances and art-making workshops.
“We all play a role in this, in creating history,” Grant said. “I think that the thing that we were really excited about, that this was not just an art piece, that this got to be more performance art … and experiential art, is that it gets to live and pass on something to people, and people get to experience something that they can take with them and feel a part of, regardless of what community they come from.”
The artists will work with community organizations in each of the three cities to spread the word and encourage people to attend their free, family-friendly offerings.
