Review: lauren woods: American Monument: 22/2019

Review: lauren woods: American Monument: 22/2019

By Andrea Liss for Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism June 2020

Who can read the news today without seeing a headline and a visceral photograph recounting yet another shooting of an African American person? The stunning immediacy of and access to multiple forms of contemporary media have switched the terms of documentary photography's singular power. The documentary photograph's urgent purposes to warn, witness, remember, and mourn are now simultaneously called into action. Artist lauren woods has radically redefined the terms of documentary practice in her intermedia installation and research project, American Monument: 22/2019, co-produced with curator Kimberli Meyer. This project shines a sharp light on institutionalized policies of racial injustice carried out by police across the United States, evidenced by historical and recent murders of African American people.