Shaping the Past Exhibition – Black Memory STL: Division, Displacement, and Local Diaspora

MADAD is a collective of artists Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, Damon Davis, and De Nichols, bonded by their connections to St. Louis and commitments to art, design, and activism. In 2019, MADAD started Black Memory STL: Division, Displacement, and Local Diaspora, an initiative that centers around community partnerships with the St. Louis Brickline Greenway and the Griot Museum. Black Memory STL illuminates Black oral and spatial histories that address racial divisions, housing injustice, and forced displacements.

MADAD began working together on urgent matters of public art and spatial justice in 2014 following the police murder of Michael Brown. MADAD (along with Marcis Curtis, Derek Laney, Sophie Lipman, and Elizabeth Vega) constructed Mirror Casket, “a work of art that evokes more empathy into this circumstance.”

instagram.com/de_nichols | twitter.com/de_nichols
instagram.com/damondavis | twitter.com/heartacheNpaint
instagram.com/nezombie | twitter.com/activatethecity

LEFT: Mallory Nezam, Damon Davis, and De Nichols. “Mirror Casket” in protest, 2014. RIGHT TOP: De Nichols, Marcis Curtis, Damon Davis, Sophie Lipman, Mallory Nezam, Derek Laney, and Elizabeth Vega Mirror Casket, performative funeral procession in Ferguson, Missouri, 2014 ; RIGHT BOTTOM: “Mirror Casket” in protest at Ferguson Police Department in first public appearance, 2014.

LEFT: Photographer Unknown. Courtesy of MADAD; RIGHT TOP: Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Mallory Nezam; RIGHT BOTTOM: Photographer Unknown. Courtesy of MADAD

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Rendering at Harris Stowe Quad in St. Louis , 2020

Courtesy of the artists

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“In the future, history will be understood as iterative, consisting of both truth and interpretation; we will not hold it too tightly nor will we take it too lightly.”

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Shaping the Past Exhibition – Black Memory STL: Division, Displacement, and Local Diaspora

MADAD

Rendering at Harris Stowe Quad in St. Louis , 2020

“In the future, history will be understood as iterative, consisting of both truth and interpretation; we will not hold it too tightly nor will we take it too lightly.”