Jordan Weber
Site: Memorial Plaza and Peace Park
Curator: Diya Vij
Jordan Weber is a Midwest-based regenerative land sculptor and activist who works at the cross-section of social justice and environmental racism. For Counterpublic 2023, Weber has developed Defensive Landscape, a site-specific regenerative earthwork for St. Louis’s Peace Park built in collaboration with the site’s existing community and institutional partners. A permanent community-engaged rainwater garden, gathering space, and play area offers a critical intervention into the generational health implications of the intertwined crises of captivity and ecological apartheid.
Weber’s project begins in Memorial Plaza with a series of obsidian stone monuments that carry practical information about local abolitionist networks and community support systems available specifically to St. Louis residents of color. By the end of Counterpublic 2023, these obsidian monuments will migrate to become part of the artist’s permanent rainwater garden in Peace Park in the College Hill neighborhood, one of the few neighborhoods in the city that is currently without a park. The result is a significant educational, sculptural, and gathering site that furthers life-sustaining community infrastructures.
Defensive Landscape represents the culmination of Weber’s ongoing work in St. Louis in partnership with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Washington University’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (CRE2) and the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Green City Coalition, Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD), and numerous other collaborators.
PROGRAM INFO
ABOUT the artist
Jordan Weber is a regenerative land sculptor and activist who works at the cross-section of social justice and environmental racism. Weber was most recently commissioned by the Walker Art Center to create an urban phytoremediation farm in North Minneapolis. Weber is currently in residence at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (CRE2) in St. Louis, MO, and Harvard University as the Inaugural LOEB/ArtLab Fellow. Recent awards and fellowships include the 2022 United States Artist Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Creative Capital, and A Blade of Grass Fellowship.
ARTISTS LINKS
Instagram: @jordan_j_weber
Website: jordanjweber.madewithcolor.com
