2019 

Counterpublic 2019 was a triennial exhibition scaled to a neighborhood set to animate the everyday spaces of Cherokee Street with expansive artist commissions, performances, processions, and public programs.

Counterpublic 2019 presented forward-thinking contemporary art within the barbershops, bakeries, parks, and taquerias that anchor Cherokee Street and the surrounding neighborhoods of South St. Louis and act as gathering spaces for the many communities living in the area.

The project centered on a series of thirty-plus site-responsive commissions in venues as divergent as a tea shop, punk club, former sanctuary, Buddhist temple, Mexican panaderia, and community-organized park and basketball court. Works ranged from architectural interventions to archival community-led sessions, meal-based gatherings to dramatic public processions.

Spanning three months from April 13th to July 13th, 2019, the project was a layered, nuanced neighborhood-based platform that engaged the complex community organizing, conflicted politics, radical openings, and distressing developments that intertwine within Cherokee Street and its surrounding neighborhoods. Together, Counterpublic advanced new contexts of liberation, care, complexity, and dissent into the everyday spaces of a neighborhood through responsive commissions and intentional intersections among the many publics and counterpublics of this place.

Counterpublic 2019 was a program initiated by The Luminary, a nonprofit organization in St. Louis, MO, and was curated by James McAnally, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, and Brea Youngblood. Lead support for Counterpublic 2019 came from the Whitaker Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Regional Arts Commission, Siteman Family Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council, as well as the numerous individual members of The Luminary.