An Accumulation of Things That Refuse to be Discarded

An art piece by Kiyan Williams. Made in 2019, it is about 150 lbs (the weight of a human body) of bricks from a residential building in West Harlem that was demolished by Columbia University in order to build its Manhattanville campus (including in the gallery in which the work is displayed). The bricks are suspended from an entanglement of braids. This work depicts a central theme of the work I seek to engage in: how is gentrification unsuccessful in its attempts to ransac, destabilize, and whiten communities in New York City and other major cities?