Fred Wilson: Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds 

Columbus Park, Brooklyn

2022

Production | Exhibition Grant

Fred Wilson’s first-ever large-scale public sculpture, Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, is a site-responsive intervention in the contested terrain of historical monuments that currently reside in Columbus Park in Brooklyn. Composed of layers of decorative ironwork, fencing, and statues/busts of African figures, Wilson’s sculpture employs decorative bars as a signifier that evokes themes of detainment, incarceration, division, and fear. The location and scale of this work, standing ten feet tall, contextualizes the sculpture as an essential contributor to dialogues surrounding monuments and the politics of erasure and exclusion in public spaces. The work develops through a series of intensive pre-production workshops for youth in partnership with the Center for Court Innovation, an alternative-to-incarceration programs. Following these workshops, participants will engage the sculpture as paid facilitators and expand its significance through their own array of dynamic public performances. In Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, Wilson opens up his artistic practice in novel ways, inviting an active relationship with diverse stakeholders and contributing to the urgent discourse surrounding systemic inequities, racial justice, and the relevance of monuments to historical memory.

More Art’s mission is to create greater understanding, empathy, and dialogue through projects that contribute to social change. More Art is known for large-scale public art commissions with mid-career to established artists, with all activities free to the public. In addition to providing the artist with an exciting opportunity to expand his practice into the public sphere, Mind Forged Manacles/Manacles Forged Mind will also serve as a model for emerging artists in More Art’s professional development program for socially engaged art.For more information visit More Art.

Images:

Digital rendering of Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, an upcoming public installation by artist Fred Wilson. The sculptural mockup is situated in Brooklyn’s Columbus Park.

Portrait of Fred Wilson. Copyright Fred Wilson.