MONUMENT TO A CHANGING CITY

Monument to a Changing City was a walk-in pinhole camera in an empty storefront in Leith, Edinburgh - a monument - that served as a homebase for various projects in the neighborhood. I used a lense donated from a local optician to project street life onto a 9 foot wall in the back of the store which I lined with photosensitive paper. I used the basement of the shop as a photoraphy lab to develop the resulting 9 ft photo-mural. Custom stackable benches with built-in shelving were designed that could allow the space to easily shift between a projection theater and a workspace.

The space served as a hub for a series of projects that explored ways in which the city was changing and evolving, and lifted up members of the nearby community that countered the white, cis male heroic stereotypes dominating historical monuments and public art. Projects included an audio guide of local family owned restaurants and plans for a polinator garden to be built into an abandoned bus terminal. Audio narratives recorded at Italian, Nepalese, and Indian family-owned restaurants were recorded over the dinner table, resulting in a series of intimate audio narratives to do with family history, business concerns and economics, recipes, rituals, or the story of ingredients and where they travel from. The recordings attempted to present a sensory, non-linear history of Scottish cultural evolution over the past two hundred years.

Edinburgh, 2011; Honors from the Royal Scottish Academy.