Lawnuments

Lawnuments is a participatory and multi-phase project about the social, political, and ecological complexity of urban public space, specifically the American lawn. I invented the term “lawnument” – an amalgam of the words lawn + monument – to describe a pocket-sized plug of New York City park lawn that is then distributed and redefined through a relationship of care.

 

What is a lawn? A monument? Both are presentations of power in public space. In the American landscape, both have been deployed as tools of segregation and assertions of dominance. They have intertwined histories and shared origins. They are decidedly fixtures of America’s urban fabric. And they are necessarily up for debate.

 

Lawnuments reimagines the lawn through a lens of care. A place of gathering, not exclusion. A messy ecosystem, not a monoculture. Lawnuments also represents collective ownership. A rewriting of public space from the ground up, by everyone and everything that defines its meaning. Lawnuments are living monuments, always changing.