Charles Gains' art project unravels US deep colonial roots
3 Min Read
The conceptual artist’s expansive serial public art project will take place across three locations over the next two years, and the beginning is in Times Square, New York.
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Artist Charles Gains launches first public project addressing US colonialism.
Artist Charles Gaines launches a new public project titled The American Manifest, which is expected to last two years and to take place in multiple cities across the US.
His new work is a testament to the brutality of slavery in the US, the history and enduring legacy of colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and racial capitalism.
Eight years' worth of work and research has been invested in the development of this art project. It is the product of iterative conceptual investigation of sociopolitical structures and collaboration with the public art program directors Justine Ludwig of Creative Time, Jean Cooney of Times Square Arts, and Meredith Johnson of Governors Island Arts.
The first chapter was unveiled in Times Square last week, on July 13. It included both a performance and a site-specific art installation.
Gaines’s sculpture “Roots", encompassing seven inverted sweetgum trees that were once native to the region, engages with the nation’s history of colonization and enslavement.
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Charles Gaines' "Roots" at Times Square, NY (Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts)
As for the music performance, the orchestra was comprised of a woodwind quartet, a piano, and a tenor, and the performance was delivered on Wednesday night and Thursday night.
A number of historical texts were selected and performed using the diatonic scale to translate letters into musical notes, yielding a musical composition.
Some of these included the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion, and Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis's minority opinion.
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Charles Gaines' "Moving Chains" to be installed at NYC’s Governors Island in October (Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts)
The US has a long and gruesome history of enslaving people of African descent.
Slaves suffered from a variety of miserable and often fatal maladies due to the Atlantic Slave Trade and inhumane living and working conditions.
It is reported that between 1860 and 1865, over 10 million slaves lived in the US, where they contributed 410 billion hours of labor.
Prices of slaves varied widely over time, due to factors including supply and changes in prices of commodities such as cotton. Even considering the relative expense of owning and keeping a slave, slavery was profitable.
Despite the passage of the 1960s civil rights legislation that followed the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), African Americans living in cities throughout North America continued to suffer from economic and social inequality.
