Bryn Mawr College’s ARCH Project (Art Remediating Campus Histories), in partnership with Monument Lab, is proud to announce the five finalists that have been selected by the project’s Artist Advisory Committee to commission a lasting campus monument. This vital work builds on previous and ongoing College-supported efforts by students, staff, alumni, and faculty to reveal and repair harm, ensuring a reckoning with Bryn Mawr College’s history and a clear-sighted look at the way to a future of inclusion and reconciliation.
The five finalists (which includes four artists and one artist team) have been selected from 110 applications from 22 states and nine countries and were chosen based on the quality of their artistry, their understanding of the ARCH project themes, and an interest in engaging with the Bryn Mawr community.
Nekisha Durrett (Photo by Sonnie B. Mason)
Nekisha Durrett is the 2022 Howard University Social Justice Consortium’s (SJC) Artist in Residence Fellow. From large freestanding sculptures to intimate gallery installations, her work uses unexpected materials to make historical connections and connotations that places and materials embody but are overlooked in our day-to-day lives. Whether reimagining pre-Colonial landscapes, bygone Black communities, or family lore, Durrett’s research-driven practice allows viewers to consider what is revealed or concealed when information is filtered across time. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The National Museum of African American History and Culture and The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC, USA).
Learn more about Nekisha Durrett’s work and follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Amanda D. King, JD (Photo by Robert Banks)
Amanda D. King, JD is the creative director of Shooting Without Bullets, a nonprofit creative agency and production company. She is a conceptual artist, cultural strategist, and social justice advocate that uses arts and culture to envision possibilities for transforming individuals, communities, and society. King's multidisciplinary expertise in jurisprudence, art history, fashion, and culture inform her socially engaged practice, which uses visual communication & design, creative consulting, and arts education to mobilize her community and reciprocate grace. King lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she manages her studio practice. She earned an A.B. in history of art at Bryn Mawr.
Learn more about Amanda D. King’s work and follow her on Instagram.
Risa Puno (Photo by Talisman Brolin)
Risa Puno is a New York City-based sculpture and installation artist who uses interactivity and play to understand how we relate to one another. She has exhibited with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (New York, USA), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Connecticut, USA), El Museo del Barrio (New York, USA), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, USA), MMX Open Art Venue (Berlin, Germany), and Science Gallery (Dublin, Ireland), among others. Puno’s work has been featured across radio and print, including The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, ProPublica, and The Boston Globe. She currently serves on the NYC DOT Art Advisory Committee.
Learn more about Risa Puno through her work and follow her Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Jean Shin (Photo by Daniel Terna)
Jean Shin is a tenured adjunct professor at the Pratt Institute and is known for her work in public sculptures, transforming discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (New York, New, USA), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, USA), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC, USA), and Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, USA), where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Frederic Church Award, for her contributions to American art and culture.
Learn more about Jean Shin through her work and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
Sharon Hayes (Photo by Photo by Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet) & Michelle Lopez (Photo by Project 61)
Sharon Hayes teaches at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an artist who uses video, performance, sound, and public sculpture to expose intersections between history, politics and speech to unravel reductive historical narratives and to re-ignite dormant pathways through which counter-understandings of the contemporary political condition can be formed. Hayes has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at n.b.k. (Neue Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, Germany), Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), and the Whitney Museum of American Art in (New York, USA). Hayes was awarded the US Artists Fellowship (2021), the Pew Fellowship (2016), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), among others.
Learn more about Sharon Hayes through her work.
Michelle Lopez is Associate Professor in Fine Arts, Sculpture, at the University of Pennsylvania (Weitzman School of Design) and a multimedia artist known for her rigorous conceptual practice and boldly experimental approach to process and material. Lopez’s installations and sculptural works are grounded in research on the iconography of cultural phenomena that transcends material properties and investigates the way the viewer’s body interacts with architectural space to re-orient the possibility of empowerment for the disenfranchised. Her work has been exhibited at Fondazione Trussardi (Milan, Italy), LA><Art (Los Angeles, USA), Harvard Carpenter Center, PS1 MOMA, Simon Preston Gallery (New York, USA), Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles, USA), among others. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Sculpture Fellowship (2011), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).
Learn more about Michelle Lopez through her work and follow her on Instagram.
What's Next?
On March 30th, 2023, the five finalists will be invited to share their final proposals with the Bryn Mawr College community in a public presentation (finalists are compensated $4,000 for their proposals.) Informed by community feedback, the Artist Advisory Committee will make recommendations that will be delivered to Bryn Mawr College’s President and Board of Trustees. The Board will make a final decision by May 2023.
The budget for the final selected project is $560,000 with an artist fee at $112,000.