‘I Try to Create a Traumatic Experience’: Watch Artist Doreen Garner Take Apart a Monument to a Racist Medical Doctor

In the past two weeks, statues of Christopher Columbus, Robert E. Lee,
slave traders, and leaders of the Confederacy
have been toppled and covered in protest signs as part of the
widespread demonstrations following the police killing of George
Floyd in Minneapolis.

Back in 2017, artist Doreen Garner turned her attention to
another figure commemorated by a problematic statue: J. Marion
Sims, a pioneer of gynecology who conducted experiments on enslaved
black women. Sims, who believed that black women did not feel
as much pain as white women, used no anesthesia during his invasive
procedures.

For her exhibition at Pioneer Works in New York in
2017, aptly titled “White Man on a Pedestal,” Garner worked with
artist Kenya Robinson to create a silicon cast of Sims’s monument,
which was then still on view in Manhattan’s Central Park. (It was
later removed and placed in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where
he is buried.)

In the performance that accompanied the sculpture, black women
dissected the cast of Sims’s body, performing the same operations
on him that he performed on enslaved women.

Speaking to Art21 in an exclusive interview as
part of the New York Close Up series, Garner explained the
symbolism of her work: “I’m a
Black woman horrified by these actions, and yet I have to show all
these actions so that it’s not a situation where people are able to
overlook this information anymore.”

“I try to create a traumatic experience,” Garner told Art21, adding: “It’s not a desire that I naturally have, it’s
just what I have to do.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part
of Art21’s series New York Close Up,
below. 



This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art
in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch episodes
of other series like “New York Close Up” and “Extended Play” and
learn about the organization’s educational programs
at Art21.org.

The post ‘I Try to Create a Traumatic Experience’: Watch
Artist Doreen Garner Take Apart a Monument to a Racist Medical
Doctor appeared first on artnet News.