Proposal for a 28th Amendment?
Is It Possible to Amend an Unequal System?
2021–2022 Queens Museum Iteration
Participatory installation with sonic soapbox sculptures, recording booth, evolving oral archive, six 4K videos, and five 60x120” canvas banners, Queens Museum, Flushing, NY.
Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System? is an iterative participatory installation made in collaboration with Alex Strada that was initially on view at the Queens Museum with additional iterations across the country (2021–2025). This evolving work critically examines the U.S. Constitution through listening, recording, and intervening. Central to the installation are sonic soapbox sculptures that build upon the history of the soapbox as a site of collective struggle while emphasizing listening, mutuality, and access. These sculptures emit a growing oral archive of responses to the project's questions recorded by past visitors using the installation's recording booth. Videos depict the hands of legal scholars as they unpack, mark up, and redact the U.S. Constitution.
The installation is activated through public workshops organized with local community partners and legal scholars. Collaborators for the Queens iteration included Malikah; Guardians of Flushing Bay; New New Yorkers; Queens Teens; Dream Defenders; CUNY Law Professors Charisa Kiyô Smith, Julia Hernandez, Rebecca Bratspies, and Cindy SooHoo; Harry Wallace, lawyer and Chief of the Unkechaug Indian Nation; lawyer and scholar Derecka Purnell; and activist and scholar nyle fort. These gatherings bring people together to collectively consider, question, and debate systemic repair, radical change, and abolition to imagine more equitable futures.
Selected Public Programs
Queens Museum Iteration
Made in collaboration with Alex Strada. In partnership with Malikah, Guardians of Flushing Bay, New New Yorkers, Queens Teens, Dream Defenders, and CUNY Law School.
Defending Our Bodily Autonomy in a Broken System: with CUNY Law Professor Cindy SooHoo and Malikah.
Constituting Community: with Dream Defenders, movement lawyer Derecka Purnell, and scholar and activist nyle fort.
Call to Care: Protecting Flushing Creek through the Rights of Nature: with lawyer Chief Harry Wallace, CUNY Law Professor Rebecca Bratspies, and Guardians of Flushing Bay.
We the People? / Nosotrx la Gente?: with the New New Yorkers and CUNY Law Professor Julia Hernandez.
Teen Power: Political Futures: with CUNY Law Professor Charisa Kiyo Smith and the Queens Teens.
Press / Writing / Radio
Your 28th Amendment. WNYC, The Brian Lehrer Show.
The Museum Issue. Spike Art Magazine, Issue 75.
Accessible Amendments. Live radio conversation with Tali Keren, Seb Cho, and Catherine Grau. Montez Press Radio, October 25, 2022.
Soapbox Oral Archive. With Alex Strada. Montez Press Radio, February 24, 2022.
Editors' Picks. Artnet, October 19, 2021. By Sarah Cascone.
5 Things to Do This Weekend. The New York Times, September 30, 2021. By Melissa Smith.