St. Louis, MO, USA; Cambridge, MA, USA
MADAD – Mallory Nezam, De Nichols, and Damon Davis

Mallory Nezam, De Nichols, and Damon Davis are the artists and designers of MADAD, a collective from St. Louis, MO. MADAD works to reimagine how joy, justice, and interactivity improve public spaces and cultural experiences in St. Louis.

Their work supports a new series of interactive public monuments that illuminate spatial injustice and cultural memory gaps in St. Louis, related to racial division, residential displacement, and localized diaspora.
  
Mallory Nezam is a civic artist and cultural consultant who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more equitable and joyful. She specializes in creative placeknowing and equitable community development and uses a performance practice to bring justice and joy to the cities she works in.
 
De Nichols is a designer, social entrepreneur, and keynote lecturer who mobilizes global change makers to activate creative ideas that address civic and social challenges within their communities.
 
Damon Davis is an award-winning post-disciplinary artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans across illustration, painting, printmaking, music, film, and public art.

Featured Work

Black Memory STL: Division, Displacement, and Local Diaspora is a multi-year series of public art installations and interventions that illuminate spatial injustice and cultural memory gaps in St. Louis, Missouri, as caused by racial division, residential displacement, and localized diaspora. The preliminary projects for this body of work stem from community partnerships that the collective, MADAD, has generated from their role with the Chouteau Greenway development and Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis. Initial sites of the team’s public, interactive works include: The Griot Museum (St. Louis Avenue), Millcreek Valley (Market Street), and Eads Bridge (East St. Louis).