One Fine Show: “Monuments” at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary and The Brick

 But “MONUMENTS” demonstrates that a juicy topic can be explored away from the headlines, especially with the right roster of artists. The show juxtaposes decommissioned monuments, many of them Confederate, with newly commissioned works by Bethany Collins, Abigail DeVille, Karon Davis, Stan Douglas, Kahlil Robert Irving, Cauleen Smith, Kevin Jerome Everson, Walter Price, Monument Lab, Davóne Tines and Julie Dash, and Kara Walker—all of whom have spent more time thinking about this issue than most of the formerly loud voices on this topic.

Walker certainly knows monuments—recall A Subtlety (2014) at the Domino Sugar Factory—and is listed as a co-curator of this show. Her Unmanned Drone (2023) sums up its thesis: it is constructed from a former equestrian sculpture of “Stonewall Jackson” dedicated in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1921, and decommissioned in 2021. Walker’s version is astounding, merging Jackson with Little Sorrel, his steed, so that the horse’s snout protrudes from between their four legs. In Drone, Jackson feels like he’s disappearing, his hand on the ground, his own empty pants pointed in the wrong direction and open so you can see how hollow they are. In an interview, Walker says her “violent remix” is appropriate for a man who was attempting to do the same to the country. I would extend the argument to the level of the medium, as well. A statue of a loser was already something that should not exist.

Collins has engraved the Jackson plinth with Carolina rose petals for her own contribution, a reference to the flowers that former slaves used to memorialize a prison camp for Union soldiers on the first Memorial Day in 1865.