By Melissa Noel ·Updated December 11, 2023
In its largest public endeavor to date, digital art platform Kinfolk recently launched its New York City-wide exhibition, the Signature Series. Through augmented reality (AR), the series places digital monuments representing Black history and culture across New York City, created by New York artists Pamela Council, Derrick Adams, Tourmaline, and Hank Willis Thomas.
The Kinfolk app lets users view these digital monuments at specific sites using technology created by Niantic Lightship, the company behind Pokémon Go. These special in-app AR monuments feature new and existing artwork that reimagines public spaces involving Black narratives, both past and present.
“I want people to understand the spaces that we’re walking around. Understand that the government and institutions are not prioritizing the lives and impact of Black, brown and queer people on the spaces that we walk through. Kinfolk is an initiative and an organization that’s committed to reimagining these spaces and prioritizing Black, brown, and queer communities within them,” says Idris Brewster, who co-founded Kinfolk along with Glenn Cantave and Micah Milner.
Tourmaline: ‘Alien Superstar’
In their work, Adams pays tribute to Alma and Victor Hugo Green, the creators of the Black Motorist Green Book. This guidebook directed Black travelers toward non-racist businesses during the segregation era with his digital monument. Thomas has created a 50-foot-tall afro pick, a digitized version of his large-scale sculpture All Power to the People Council. The story of Mary Jones, one of the earliest known American trans women, is revisited in Tourmaline’s Alien Superstar in SoHo where she lived and worked during the early 19th century.
Brewster told ESSENCE that using AR to view the monuments is more than just a new way to appreciate the art; it’s a necessity due to a lack of places to tell our stories. “That’s why we have to use AR in the first place, because there are very few physical markers that showcase the spaces and the culture that we brought and built within this city,” he says.
Using this unique app is quite simple. Once downloaded, a user can open it and access a map that will show all of the different locations across the city where digital monuments can be found. Once a specific monument location is selected, the app directs a user to that space. Once near a monument, the app will alert the user and prompt them to go to a specific location where they can point their phone, and the digital monument will appear.
The creators of Kinfolk say that they also utilize vinyl stickers with QR codes near digital monument locations so that people passing by can scan, download the app, and then see the monuments.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Kinfolk Foundation (@kinfolktech)
With the Kinfolk Signature Series, Brewster says the monuments will be permanent as they progress toward their goal of having hundreds of them around New York City.
“With our location-based technology, we can create public art exhibitions with ease, giving access to artworks and histories that would have been otherwise inaccessible or forgotten,” Brewster says.
The post We Don’t Think You’ve Seen NYC Like This! Must-See Exhibition Is Placing Black Culture And History Monuments All Over The City Using Augmented Reality appeared first on Essence.
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