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Hidden Histories: Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed part of Un-Monument
September 1 @ 12:00 pm – October 28 @ 7:00 pm
Un-Monument is a two-year initiative that reimagines and fosters discourse around Boston’s monuments and memorials in a way that centers and amplifies a multiplicity of voices and creates authentic learning moments across the city. It invigorates public spaces through artist interventions that bring to the fore the rich histories that are often hidden.
Emerson Contemporary enthusiastically announces Hidden Histories, a series of four public art projects produced as part of the Un-Monument initiative of the City of Boston. Hidden Histories highlights the processes of collaboration, artistic research, and speculation in contemporary art.
LAUNCH PARTY: SEPTEMBER 18, 5-7:30PM, Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, 02111
WHAT: A Series of Public Art Activations that are part of Un-Monument, a multi-year public art initiative to bring temporary monuments and free programming to the City of Boston that expand the inclusive histories represented in public spaces across the City.
WHEN: September 1 through October 28, 2025.
WHERE: Beacon Hill, Boston Common, and MBTA trains and stations along the Green and Orange Lines, and virtually via the Hoverlay augmented reality application.
This initiative is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture and the Mellon Foundation.
Curated and produced by Emerson Contemporary, the exhibition will present a series of four public art projects featuring Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Combining the gallery’s mission to educate by doing, the inclusive experience of walking tours, and the idea that history is a living subject that constantly evolves, the artists received this prompt: find an aspect of the city’s past that is not currently well-known or understood and create art using new media technologies to amplify those stories.
Emerson Contemporary collaborated with Boston’s foremost historic archives: The Boston Athenaeum, Historic New England, and Massachusetts Historical Society, and the artists were subsequently invited as community research fellows. With the generous support and collaboration of the archives’ staff, artists were provided access to their rich collections and many objects that served as inspiration for their thought-provoking projects.
To support public access to Hidden Histories, the gallery has continued to build on their multi-year collaboration and partnership with Hoverlay, a Boston-based augmented reality platform where users can compose and publish immersive content. Hoverlay enables any storyteller to utilize AR to transform how they tell their stories by placing virtual story objects out in the world to be accessed by visitors’ smartphones.
