leighdavisprojects.com

Built with Berta.me

  1. Secular Columbarium for The Island is a site-based art project and mythologization of the neighborhood Southwest D.C. (known in the 19th century as "The Island”).  I created an imagined memorial located in the Capitol Skyline Hotel, SW in which objects from Southwest's recent and distant history reflect the neighborhood’s past, present, and future.  Like in a traditional columbarium, the objects both commemorate and reanimate a lost feeling, experience, or life.  Southwest is a neighborhood with a rich history, but also a vibrant present and an uncertain future (of which the renovated hotel is a part).  Like many others who visited the hotel, I was not familiar with Southwest; the items that fill the columbarium are created in mind from content gleaned online, archival research, and from my meetings and interactions with members of the SW neighborhood over a three month period.

     

     

  2. Installation view, 2012

    Installation view, 2012

  3. The above excerpts are from the Visitor Guide, which I provided to visitors on-site at the time of the installation. The guide was designed to invite interaction and instigate dialogue with the specific objects housed within the columbarium.