Revolutionary Acts is a Monument Lab performance and public art series for 2026, designed to explore the histories of the American Revolution through contemporary forms of commemoration. Rooted in New Jersey, and following a statewide open call for artists, artists Anika Grant and Nandi Jordan were selected to produce Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds, a traveling installation and participatory ritual series presented in Camden, Trenton, and Fort Lee.
The project centers the often-overlooked contributions of Black women in Revolutionary-era New Jersey through a sculptural ceremonial structure, guided tea rituals, site-based performances, and hands-on art-making workshops. By activating historic locations across the state, Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds invites residents and visitors to reflect on memory, resilience, and the stories that continue to shape civic life.
Anika Grant Bio
Anika Grant is the Founder and CEO of New Jersey-based Idlewild Experiential, launched in 2018 to create impactful live events and experiences for diverse audiences.Under her leadership, Idlewild has worked with Disney, Coca-Cola, Amazon, and Prudential. The agency has been on Event Marketer’s Top 100 Agency List since 2020 and named one of Adweek’s Top 10 Fastest Growing Agencies.
Anika brings nearly 20 years of experience in brand marketing and sponsorship, with roles at ESSENCE Festival, Madison Square Garden, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and New York City Ballet. She excels at leading diverse teams and producing large-scale immersive public events that engage communities and tell complex stories. She has lived in South Orange, NJ for over a decade.
Nandi Jordan Bio
Nandi Jordan is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in exposing the complexities and contradictions in her everyday Black life.
Trained as a sociologist and self-taught as an artist, Nandi’s work weaves the personal with the cultural and historical, creating thought-provoking juxtapositions of image and text. She found her way to art and media while earning her doctorate in sociology, often repurposing seminal texts and personal images as a way of finding her own visual language.
Her works on paper use both personal and found images, alongside book pages, to interrogate her own life experiences within the context of the broader Black experience. Her film work explores the boundaries between ethnographic research, social justice and nonfiction storytelling.