When artist Nekisha Durrett first toured Bryn Mawr College as part of the school’s application process for finalists pursuing the The ARCH (Art Remediating College Histories) Project through the non-profit Monument Lab, she stood in the Cloisters for a long time. I was her tour guide, and I stood with her wife, watching as she trudged through the high grass. In the misty February weather, she inspected the fountain and the space. It was clear that she was being moved by what she was seeing. Months later. in the early May sun, I met her in the Cloisters again. This time, it was to discuss her project that would soon be built in the Cloisters.
Durrett’s Journey
A DC born and raised artist, Durrett said she firmly believes that “everyone is born an artist, I just never stopped.” She loved what she was doing too much to stop creating art after her graduation from one of DC’s best arts public high schools, Duke Ellington. She explored lots of politics and logistics while at Cooper Union and University of Michigan, but was always doing so through the lens of art.
Much like a healthy marriage, Durrett said, art is something that you decide to keep committing to every day. She has created a number of powerful works of public art and installations, and she “spent 2020 honing in on artistic and social themes.”
A Heavy History
Durrett explained that the Cloisters had carried a “heaviness” that struck her when she first came to Bryn Mawr. She said that the space “feels wounded,” and she wanted to address it with her installation. The Cloisters is where Bryn Mawr’s infamous second president M. Carey Thomas had her ashes scattered, and what she wanted to be the central point of her racist, antisemitic, elitist campus. Durrett’s installation, “Don’t Forget to Remember (Me)” will feature a linked pathway through the Cloisters, featuring engraved bricks that will include the names of Black staff who were hidden and erased by Bryn Mawr, primarily between 1900-1940.
These pavers will be made with Perry House soil. Perry House, which was designated as a space for Black and brown students in 2005, was “taken offline” abruptly in 2012 when the college allowed the building to become dilapidated. They tore down the building, and now there is only a patch of gravel left behind a garden, just off campus. Nekisha gestured to the center of campus and said that she “wants to bring Perry House here,” continuing that it’s an “altering of the relegation of Black students.”
Prior to coming to Bryn Mawr, Durrett did a lot of research. Then, when she visited the archives, they showed her the timecards that will have their employee’s names stamped on the pavers. She explained, “In 1961, there was a fire, and they were pulling things out that remained, and time cards were one of those things. And somehow, somehow, they’re barely damaged. There’s these beautiful burned and smoked edges, but it was a pretty extensive fire and these time cards remained. Those were a huge inspiration for the project, because it’s like they really wanted to be remembered.”
Durrett’s Artistic Process
After coming to Bryn Mawr and going on a Black at Bryn Mawr Tour and a campus-wide tour, Durrett said she knew that the project had to be “anchored in the Cloisters.” The “significance of the Cloisters to students” was critical to her. Then, she had to design the monument that would fit in the Cloisters.
Durrett shared, “One of the things that stuck out from our time with you was when you were talking about the various school traditions, about the class songs — that was the first time I’d heard that was the first time I’d that it was a tradition that every class had a song — and so I thought that it would be interesting to add another layer to the piece to name it the title of a song, that maybe was from the era.”
Students sing these songs at Taylor, where the timecards survived. They also perform under the window of the space where Thomas would go on antisemitic and racist lectures on Sunday mornings. When Durrett discovered this link, her assistant Sam Giarranti pointed out, “She talks to ancestors all the time.”
It’s like they really wanted to be remembered
Nekisha Durrett
One of the ways that Durrett said ancestors were speaking through her was when she was drafting designs for the space. She said she was making a “meandering” S-shape design with her calligraphy pen. The design didn’t work, so she set it aside. Then, when she was looking at the archive’s staff ledgers, that very S design was the border of the historical ledgers.
When she was designing the shape of the walkway, she decided on a square knot. This type of tie can get tighter on either end, and it’s difficult to undo once it has been tied. She wanted this shape to also be similar to braiding and hair, which has strong personal and historical significance to the Black community.
The Malleability of Monuments
Initially, Durrett had an idea for a glowing crack in the pavement that would glow at night — a literal strike — but she feared that it may change over time. She liked the idea of a monument being something on the ground, in order to challenge what a monument is. Usually, monuments force people to look up, but she wants this to be different. The downward perspective draws upon the tunnels under the school where Black employees were forced to labor, away from students and faculty. The use of pavers to create a pathway is also supposed to illustrate Enid Cook’s walk from Haverford town every day to campus, as the first Black woman to graduate from Bryn Mawr.
Durrett explained that she does not want this art to change meaning or get misconstrued over time, but that the concept can grow. “It’s not a time capsule for this particular moment,” Durrett explained, “There’s room to evolve.”
Durrett is exploring ways to expand upon research and for the monument to grow. She is producing additional pavers and leaving behind a stockpile so that more names can be added later on. It’s an “invitation” for expansion, and for the descendants of the original employees to expand.
This monument isn’t a place for work and reflection to stop. “There should be other efforts,” Durrett said, suggesting getting professors involved, more research, further inclusivity. “This art is a symbol of those efforts,” but not the end, and should be a “beacon for other universities.”
“The art can start the conversation,” Durrett said. People don’t typically give credit to visual art, according to Durrett, but she says that it can “democratize space” and provide “different entry points” to historical issues. “Art can change culture,” Giarranti said. Durrett countered, “It is culture.”
