The Memory of Slavery in the Urban Landscape of Alexandria, Virginia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20055918 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Renée Ater (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Pages | 215-232 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-28 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780429316807-14 |
| OpenAlex | W2953501425 |
| ISBN | 9780429316807 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
This chapter considers two recent monuments to the memory of slavery in Alexandria, Virginia: Erik Blome’s Edmonson Sisters Memorial (2010) and Mario Chiodo’s Path of Thorns and Roses (2013), part of the Contraband and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial. The bronze monuments reveal the difficulties contemporary artists face in visualizing the historical enslaved body in three-dimensional form and in rendering it with sensitivity in public space. Giving shape to and producing two different histories of the slave past for contemporary audiences in Alexandria, both rely on nineteenth-century figural tropes of blackness: the properly clothed and Christian body of the formerly enslaved and the anguished and suffering body of the slave. Neither monument can truly convey the “terrible spectacle” of slavery, the violence and subjugation, only suggest it
Archaeology · Environmental planning · Geography · Urban landscape · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |