#ChalkedUnarmed

Abstract

Mall worker scrubbing off a #ChalkedUnarmed installation outside the Frontenac Mall, in a wealthy St. Louis suburb, May 2015. (Michael Kingsbaker) (Sara Swaty) Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is a creative catalyst who loves cities and believes we have the tools to make them more equitable and joyful. A St. Louis native, she uses performance and play to create bolder publics and produces cultural experiences wherein the public, artists, and local governments cocreate to tear down social barricades. Nezam is a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow, together with collaborators and forum contributors De Nichols and Damon Davis. “As a St. Louisian and an artist, I was profoundly changed by Mike Brown's murder and my community's response to it. It made me commit clearly and fully to my values. Many of us during and after the Ferguson uprising were fully immersed in the struggle through a blend of activism and art. Artists used their superpowers to propel the movement forward.” “Brown's death changed the focus of my career. Now I work within the fields of urban planning and urban policy to have an impact on racial injustice at the systemic level, at the root of it.” “‘Still here’ is our region grappling with its long history of racialized violence, spatial segregation, and exclusion (both before and after the Ferguson uprising).” Mall worker scrubbing off a #ChalkedUnarmed installation outside the Frontenac Mall, in a wealthy St. Louis suburb, May 2015. (Michael Kingsbaker) Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, #ChalkedUnarmed, 2015. Public performance art. #ChalkedUnarmed is a public intervention that educates passersby about the extrajudicial killings of unarmed Black people at the hands of the police, disrupted complacency and inaction, and honored lives lost. The project is open source and became an artistic tool that anyone anywhere could use and install in public space.