MEET THE ARTIST: vanessa german
Meet the artist: vanessa german
Photo by AJ Mitchell for Trust for the National Mall
Hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, vanessa german describes herself as a “self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, in order to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections.”
The powerful ambition of her craft is matched by a stunning clarity of purpose, as she practices “art making as an act of restorative justice” by drawing on the inspiration of complex histories and personal lived experience as a queer Black woman in the United States.
vanessa is part of a group of six visionary artists making history on the National Mall this year. Beyond Granite’s pilot exhibition will be the first curated outdoor exhibition in the history of the Mall, featuring original works from vanessa and seven other artists. The exhibition’s central question asks, “What stories remain untold on the National Mall?” and will expand our imagination about what America’s Front Yard can be for our communities and country.
In 2011, vanessa founded the Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for women, children, and families. Three years later, she opened the ARThouse – a combination of a community studio, a garden, an outdoor theater, and an artist residency.
She has been awarded the Heinz Award for the Arts, the Don Tyson Prize, and was the recipient of the United States Artist Grant, among many other honors. Her work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions like The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta, Georgia), and Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, New York).
Speaking about Beyond Granite on the National Mall, vanessa said…
Photo by AJ Mitchell for the Trust for the National Mall
“I’m so excited to share on the National Mall. I really began thinking about making a monument to the human heart, which is so beautifully connected to the well of inspiration for this project—which is Marian Anderson’s Easter concert at the National Mall, where 75,000 human beings came out to listen to a Black woman fill their hearts with song.”
- vanessa german
Her work is held in permanent collections across the country, including at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, Illinois), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, Connecticut).
When Beyond Granite: Pulling Together debuts this summer, vanessa will bring her inimitable talents to one of the nation’s most iconic public spaces, as she presents Of Thee We Sing at the Lincoln Memorial Plaza. The project will reveal a timely new vibrancy for the legacy of Marian Anderson—the very inspiration for Pulling Together—through an innovative statue of Marian Anderson, held up by a sea of hands.
About Beyond Granite
Photo by Monument Lab
Beyond Granite, funded by the Mellon Foundation, invites visionary artists to create special commemorative exhibits, performances, and installations on the National Mall and throughout the District of Columbia that will expand the public's imagination and understanding and create a more a more inclusive, equitable, and representative process for commemoration on the National Mall – and beyond.
”Pulling Together,” the inaugural exhibition of Beyond Granite, will feature installations and exhibits or prototype monuments, on the National Mall and in Washington, DC from leading contemporary artists that respond to a central curatorial question: What stories remain untold on the National Mall?
The Trust for the National Mall is honored to be working with the Mellon Foundation and its partners The National Capitol Planning Commission and the National Park Service to bring this new series to life to tell the fuller American story in the commemorative landscape.