Sam Durant. Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.

Sam Durant's Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C. consists of thirty minimalist appropriations of American monuments honoring victims from the seventeenth century to the end of the so-called Indian Wars in 1890. While twenty-five memorialize white Americans, five recall Native American fatalities. These monuments, erected at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, reflect the violent and unequal power relations between whites and Native Americans during the creation of the republic. With this installation, on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the artist inquires into the ways history is written through abstract visual markers in the shape of obelisks that embody an authoritative presence.