Interdisciplinary visual artists Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle and Lava Thomas will continue their November discussion regarding the dismantling of hegemonic factors within public art selection and looking at who determines what is “monumental.” Together they will continue to unpack the problematic elements within public art commissions and artwork removal, and the lifelong impact that cycles of commissioning have upon communities. How do monuments that are both erected and dismantled impact the geographies where they are placed? What narratives do they continually assert within their presence and absences? How does one create a monument that begins to balance the scales of history? How do we reimagine the possibilities for monuments in the face of insistence upon historical amnesia / purposeful forgetting? Whether creating memorials to victims of racial violence, illuminating the labor of women in the struggle for equality, or stretching the conventions of portraiture and representation, Thomas’s practice amplifies ideas that center visibility, resilience, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression. Her oeuvre spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, exploring the events, figures and movements that inform and shape our individual and collective histories. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the "Historical Present," as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. ----------------------------------------- Arts + Design Mondays is organized and sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative. The series is co-curated by the African American Student Development Office; Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive; Berkeley Center for New Media and the History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series; College of Environmental Design, the Arcus Endowment Diversity Platform Committee and the Arcus Chair in Gender, Sexuality, and the Built Environment; Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Future Histories Lab, a project of UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative; Graduate School of Journalism; California Humanities and Villa San Francisco. Technical support and presentation offered by UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science, Division of Arts & Humanities. The 2021 series of Arts + Design Mondays is made possible thanks to the generous financial support of Nancy Olson and Buzz Wiesenfeld. In-kind support provided by BAMPFA. For more information, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu/mondays. All events will be live captioned. If you require captioning to access a pre-recorded event on our site, please contact Paris Cotz at pariscotz@berkeley.edu. Please expect 7-10 days for captioning to be provided.