Boulevard of African Monarchs

Exhibition: September 2020 - December 2021

116th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, Harlem, NY

Presented by The Marcus Garvey Park Alliance & NYC DOT ART Community Commission

Boulevard of African Monarchs connects Harlem, a hub of African excellence in America, to Tiebele, Burkina Faso, royal court of the Kassena people. The work reproduces house paintings by women artists, a tradition in Tiebele that predates the triangular transatlantic slave trade. The sculpture transforms marks into freestanding shapes that BREATHE.

Boulevard of African Monarchs is dedicated in loving memory to Emmett Till, Tanisha Anderson, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many thousands more who have been lynched in America.

Boulevard of African Monarchs is the first sculpture in the Sankofa_ project. Each site-specific work is inspired by “Sankofa” a word in the Twi language that means “go back and get it”. The works celebrate Africans and their diaspora, proclaiming Black Lives Matter in three dimensions. Sankofa_ honors, in monumental form, Black Beauty, free in the public square.