Artist Statement

By Theaster Gates

A Monument to Listening is my attempt at leveraging the monument to new potentials, while honoring and celebrating the heroic actions of Tom Lee.

The installation is conceived of 32 honed basalt sculptures which represent the lives that Tom Lee saved. Tom Lee and his courageous sacrifice are represented by one supplementary towering sculpture made from polished basalt - the only form within the installation that has a reflective surface.

Through this installation, I invite you to reach a more human place in relation to your neighbors while seeing yourself reflected in these forms of memory.

The sculptures span two areas of the park. Twenty-eight honed basalt sculptures are positioned in a circular configuration within the point of reflection. Four honed sculptures and one polished basalt sculpture representing Tom Lee are installed in the point of redemption, overlooking the Mississippi River. Given the nature of this complex stone, each form has a unique surface treatment.

A Monument to Listening pays tribute to Tom Lee’s legacy, while functioning as a corrective medicine for a world that would rather view passively than talk intentionally about the truths of race. These functional basalt forms, which recall varying kinds of seating from dining room chairs to shoeshine stands, give permission to experience multitudinous modes of presence and remembrance.

The monument itself is too passive to tackle the generational scar tissue that remains in Memphis, but it invites you to ask one another more complex questions about your belief systems, how you want to imagine a new future for Memphis, and how you might enact change in the world. This work is an anti-monument, and it attempts to create new avenues for dialogue.

I want Tom Lee to be remembered as a human who saw other human lives as equally valuable, if not more valuable, than his own. I invite you to visit the site and have the same encounter with your own humanity.

This is my small contribution to the possibility of healing in our world.