PROVIDENCE LANDMARK PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION

How can one sit tell the story of Thomas Lewis, of Elinor Eldridge, of Dona Fefa, Canonicus and Patriarca; of the Cape Verdean community sailing across the Atlantic to create a new home in Providence, of the trading of people for labor that built this city, of the vibrancy of the creative community, of urban renewal’s decimation, of the toiling of the jewelry makers and workers in the mills; about the dispossession of the Narraganset in the founding of Providence, one of the oldest cities in our union? It cannot. What we can do is begin to unearth their truths through a process of excavation of the intertwined history still present in the land. At this site of contested ground, shifting ground, ground that holds the history of the land and the people, we unearth histories through excavation, creating a new space of collection.