jennifer williams
extended barricade extended barricade - detail 1 extended barricade - detail 2 burn before reading queens barricade side queens barricade whole 7th street ripped paper
barricade cyanotypes
Construction barricades exist as slap dash temporary non-spaces, erected to hide the frenetic and often aggressive neighborhood altering activities happening behind the veil of their cover. They disrupt our sense of place by genericising stretches of sidewalk within otherwise uniquely crafted neighborhoods, acting as vague placeholders for "the future", and function as voids in otherwise relatively uniform street level landscapes. They could be any urban neighborhood, in any city. While they may seem regionless, closer inspection yields idiosyncratic clues informing us of their age, origins of materials, and handcrafted individuality. The economic downturn has left many of these structures standing well past their intended age. As layers of graffiti and fly posters peel and decay, and as their structures begin to the buckle and sag, they become sculptural formations, a series of panels which seem to mimic sentence structures. While the work may seem to comment on the turbulent neighborhood altering activities concealed behind their plywood cover, I believe they also celebrate the elaborate evolution of the neighborhood and ultimately of the city itself within recent times.
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