Panel also available via Zoom

Monuments and memorials have long served as placeholders reinforcing certain ways of telling history. In recent years, they have made headlines across the globe as statues of former slave owners and police officers have been toppled, dragged into rivers, vandalized and removed from public space for their position as oppressive markers of white supremacy and racism. As certain states have passed laws prohibiting the removal of monuments, others around the nation have been destroyed, relocated to institutions and storage facilities, or replaced by new statues honoring previously unrecognized, important historical figures.

Amid these international debates, Who Needs a Monument? is a conversation with Fountainhead artist-in-residence Lihi Turjeman and local artists Najja Moon and Chire Regans, moderated by Luna Goldberg. The artists will discuss how we memorialize the past, address legacies of injustice, and reimagine monuments, their form, and the way stories are told in public space.

This program is part of At Memory’s Edge, a Miami-based exhibition and programming series curated by Luna Goldberg. Focused around contested monuments, the exhibition opens in January 2022 at Fundación Pablo Atchugarry Miami, and will feature works by Ashley Freeby, Efrat Hakimi, Iris Helena, and Lihi Turjeman.

At Memory's Edge is funded in part by Locust Projects’ WaveMaker Grants, the NWSA Alumni Foundation Inspiration Grant, and The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by Oolite Arts. This project is made possible with support by the Carlo and Micol Schejola Foundation and The Fountainhead Residency.

Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqcuCprz0iG9TkEHcVxICS3d_qMMgk5J5Q

Najja Moon is a Miami based artist and cultural practitioner, born and raised in North Carolina. Her practice is centered on the idea that art is utilitarian. An amalgamation of practicalities that improve her life; design and language, cultural responsibility and community, her visual arts practice uses drawing and text to explore the intersections of queer identity, the body and movement, black culture and familiar relations both personal and communal. Moon is the inaugural artist to be commissioned by the Bass Museum for their “New Monuments” program. She is also the winner for a 2020 Knight New Work Grant for her ongoing project “The Huddle is a Prayer Circle”. Other recent exhibitions and commissions included: Time Sensitive, 2020, Spinello Projects (Miami); Dust Specks on the Sea, 2020, Little Haiti Cultural Center (Miami); Grounded, 2019, Spinello Projects (Miami); SPRTS Issue 9, 2019, Endless Editions, NYABF @MoMA PS1 (New York); How to Patch a Leaky Roof, 2019, Commissioned by O, Miami (Miami); 2 & a possible, 2019, Supplement Projects x Arts.Black (Miami). In 2015, She Co-Founded the BLCK family, a Miami based creative collective responsible for the installation of mobile performance art shows centered around culinary, visual, performing and social arts. She Co-Founded the former queer social club for womxn, This Girls lunchbox (2017-2019), that centered art as a convening point.

Chire Regans, also known as VantaBlack, was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and relocated to Miami with her family in the late 1980s. Her passion for art began soon after. After graduating from Florida A&M University, Regans began to focus primarily on drawing from life and portraiture. As societal issues began to weigh heavily on her conscience, a message took shape behind the imagery. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement pushed her art in the direction of social awareness and change. Regans has dedicated both her artistic practice and her life to community advocacy and activism. In 2016, a number of young people became victims of an ongoing epidemic of gun violence in Miami-Dade County. Driven by the need to bring awareness to this epidemic, Regans began a series of memorial portraits of victims of violence here and beyond. This series, which Regans categorizes as Social Commentary Art, began with five portraits and now includes over 200 portraits of victims and their stories.Regans serves on the Miami-Dade Community Relations Board’s Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Committee and works as a teaching artist at PAMM. She is a proud mother, visual artist, truth-teller, and community advocate.

Lihi Turjeman (Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1985) lives and works in Tel-Aviv and Turin. She received her MFA from Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. In 2015, she was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Award for young artists. Turjeman is a former resident of Cité internationale des arts in Paris; Artport TLV; Fondazione Spinola Banna in Italy; Nars Foundation; and ISCP in Brooklyn, NY. Turjeman has exhibited widely during the past decade. Some venues include: The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, CCA TLV, Petach-Tikva Museum of Contemporary Art, the Haifa Museum of Art, and others. She is represented by Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv. Her works may be found in public and private collections in Israel, Europe, and in the United States. The artist is represented by Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv/Zurich and Ncontemporary, Milan/London.