Counterpublic 2023 Makes Major Artist Announcement

Counterpublic is a triennial civic exhibition that engages the complex histories, charged present, and many possible futures of St. Louis from April 15 – July 15, 2023. Counterpublic 2023 brings together thirty-plus leading and emergent artists, architects, collectives and community organizers to reimagine civic infrastructures towards generational change. The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis is proud to be a major sponsor of the exhibition.

Following a year-long process of community engagement in which neighbors in St. Louis were invited to reflect upon the most urgent needs facing their communities in order to shape the theme of the exhibition, Counterpublic determined to focus its 2023 edition on public memory and reparative futures—how our history is told, held and healed, and how our future is envisioned collectively towards new liberated lifeways. The three month exhibition will include active education, research, residencies, performances, publications, public projects, and collaborative programming across the city.

Working in public places, cultural institutions, historic houses, and community gathering spaces, the footprint of a displaced neighborhood and the last remaining Indigenous mound in “Mound City,” the exhibition aims to be a reparative act of communal memory rooted in the land and its coexistent histories, with a rhythm meant to rattle the foundations of other futures.

Counterpublic 2023 Projects:

• The first public programs to be held in relation to Sugarloaf Mound in partnership with the Osage Nation, including a new film by New Red Order documenting repatriation efforts around the mound and expansive artistic commissions curated by Risa Puleo, featuring work from Cannupa Hanska Luger, Raven Chacon, Anita Fields and Nokosee Fields, and numerous others
• A mile-long monument to the displaced neighborhood of Mill Creek Valley by St. Louis-based artist Damon Davis along the new Brickline Greenway and grounded at St. Louis CITY SC’s Centene Stadium
• The first permanent public artwork by David Adjaye, curated by Allison Glenn and commissioned by Counterpublic and donated to The Griot Museum of Black History, a 25 year-old community museum in the St. Louis Place neighborhood of North St. Louis.

Additional commissions include a permanent wetland and sculptural installation that functions as a site of racial and ecological repair by regenerative land sculptor Jordan Weber, curated by Diya Vij and presented in collaboration with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation; new work from Jaune Quick-to-See Smith demarcating an altered map of St. Louis, curated by Risa Puleo; an exhibition by Black Quantum Futurism focused on the pasts, presents, and futures of housing, land, and public space at The Luminary and engaging the surrounding neighborhood; an architectural installation by Torkwase Dyson planned for the Scott Joplin House and Historic Site; and a new film commission by Will Rawls and combination performative lecture and video installation by Ralph Lemon curated by Katherine Simóne Reynolds.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Will Rawls
Vincent Stemmler
Maya Stovall
Simiya Sudduth/Tha Muthaship
jackie sumell
Jordan Weber
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*Indicates participation in the Curatorial Ensemble