In 2019 I made three blank New York State historic markers as a part of “Ground Revision,” a solo exhibition at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum. The exhibition focused on a former burial ground where enslaved peoples were laid to rest (some from the Dyckman estate), located not far from the house in Inwood. At that point the site was still unmarked, although now a memorial is finally in the process of being planned.

I had left the markers blank to serve as a reminder that the nearby burial ground was still unacknowledged, while also thinking about the process of how we remember history in public spaces. How many stories have been left untold? How many stories are misrepresented? The marker is an object with its own conventions, which employs an officious aesthetic to endorse an often one-sided narrative written from the perspective of European colonizers and their descendants.

For logistical reasons the markers were installed inside the house, and since then I have been waiting for the opportunity to show one outdoors, which is now happening, for an exhibition curated by Jacob Rhodes at Mother-In-Laws in Germantown, NY. The site couldn’t be more perfect—the blank marker is in dialogue with the preexisting historic markers in the area.