Featured Project
at Griffiss International Sculpture Park , Rome, NY
Linda Cunningham – Divisions
… hunger and fear can vanquish all human resistance, and all
freedom … Freedom consists in knowing freedom is in danger.
But to know … is to have time to avoid & prevent the moment of
inhumanity … the infinitesimal difference between the human
being and the non-human being …
————–Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity
Tell us about the genesis of creating this large-scale sculpture (14 ft high, 9 pieces).
Divisions was conceived & built in my Pennsylvania studio after the year I spent in Berlin on a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, which vividly informed me of the extent of cultural and individual tragedies of global warfare. Years earlier I had gone to Berlin to document the collapse of the infamous Berlin Wall, a tremendously optimistic historical moment that also deeply affected me. That experience, as well as a few years later, when I built an 11ft high steel and bronze sculpture for an exhibition in the Documenta Hall. This sculpture titled Have we chosen? responded to the commemoration of 50 years after the Allied bombing had destroyed 3/4 of the city of Kassel/Germany in one night. I formed friendships with our former enemies whose families had suffered devastating losses.
Now we see such images of war daily, but Americans have endured nothing similar in our home territory. They generally think only of 9/11. I needed to build something here that impressed and conveyed some sense of the potential inhumane consequences, but I wanted to raise questions and bring positive possibilities to mind at the same time.
When I saw these twisted steel beams on a demolition site that were evidently altered by immense heat or force and then walked by another demolition site where they were throwing huge 200-year-old hand-hewn wood beams in a dumpster, my decision was almost immediate. I first wanted to rescue the wood and then thought of constructing symbolic wall-like barriers to invoke the hopeful possibilities inherent in their collapse. The whole project came together when I sought and obtained permission from the NYC Dept. of Transportation and the Community Board to erect this sculptural installation on the traffic triangle across from the United Nations and the protest plaza.
Let’s take a closer look at the sculptures—the idea behind the pieces and their relation to Emmanuel Levinas’s texts in form and process.
These huge twisted beams that I was standing up as structural remains were obviously altered by immense force and required some text that could lead viewers to think about the inhumanity of such destruction. With a friend, a professor and scholar, Annette Aronowicz, I found a quote that did not advocate, but rather would move viewers to think. French, Jewish, philosopher Levinas equates our humanity with choice to act humanely.
Siting this installation across from the UN challenged me to make the text broadly accessible. With help from a number of other colleagues, we translated this passage from the original French into the other 5 official languages of the UN: English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic. The symbolic, no-longer-functional, wall-like barriers could display the six translations posing the positive opportunity “to choose to act humanely,” but implying the potential of the devastating inhumane alternatives.
In July 2024, Divisions became part of the permanent collection of Griffiss International Sculpture Garden and Nature Trail in Griffiss Business and Technology Park in Rome, NY. How do you see the relationship between your art and the site (NYC and NY park).
The Griffiss International Sculpture Garden and Nature Trail has been developed on the extensive grounds of a de-commissioned air force base. With visionary thinking they are filling the grounds with sculptures from many different artists that are mostly on loan. I am very pleased that they were willing to throw their resources behind installing Divisions as part of their Permanent collection. They considered Divisions an “important sculpture installation” with alternative content, very different than the helicopter military memorials that were left behind. They poured a 30 ft x 26 ft concrete pad stained gray, framed on one side by a dense growth of trees, a site seen from a heavily trafficked road but visited by many enjoying the park, especially on weekends. Griffiss shared the skills and energy of their staff and equipment, moving, lifting and transporting the sculptures, and hired a crane to install the steel sections.
Can you share some of the process of restoring, transporting, and installing a sculpture that size in the new location?
The whole installation was transported to Griffiss from Ohio with the skill and ingenuity of an Ohio artist friend, Landon Crowell, who loaded it on a huge flatbed truck with a rented forklift. It was all stored at Griffiss over the winter in a cement “cavern” that had previously stored atomic warheads during the Cold War. Griffiss Park maintenance staff set us up with high-pressure water to clean the steel surface of any loose rust and dirt and then, with their fork-lift, set them out to dry where we could coat them with a newly developed transparent sealer that restored the look of their flame-like dark red coating.
Then, with a few artist assistants, we set to work restoring the historic wood with another newly developed penetrating wood preservative that makes the wood impervious to water. Because some of the wood pieces were deteriorating beyond repair, we worked with Griffis’s staff and replaced sections with some of the same historic wood I had stored for years in my studio workshop. Then came the thrilling part when the crane picked the sculpture from a point high enough that the sculpture’s feet landed on the ground, and the Griffiss staff quickly inserted expansion bolts through the prepared holes in the feet of the steel (Post Office boxes are secured to the street similarly).
What is your takeaway from this long-term project?
Levinas’ quote remains timely. I am grateful that Griffiss acknowledged the significance of Divisions and wanted to have it included in their permanent collection where they will care for the materials in the future especially since they have invested in the work. This whole installation had remained on view for a year across from the UN since the Community board extended the usual 6-month permission and then was sited for 17 years at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, near where the Dayton accord was signed, ending the Yugoslavian conflict. I hoped that this hugely demanding project could remain in the public space where there was a chance of affecting anyone. Divisions was for me, essentially, a continuation of the series of alternative war memorials I had built years earlier focused on survivors/ victims rather than generals who are historically heroized. Griffiss’s decision to take Divisions into their permanent collection is visionary since they are a sculpture park situated on a former Air Force base that is still partially active.
About the artist: Linda Cunningham is a New York City-based artist who exhibits extensively both in New York and Germany. Her exhibition record includes 50 solo exhibitions/ installations including exhibitions in Lima, Peru, Cologne, Berlin & Kassel, Germany, recently with Five Myles Gallery, ODETTA Gallery, Brooklyn, the Bronx Museum, The American Univ. Paris, also 2 & 3 person exhibitions at BronxArtSpace and Bronx River Art Center, 2023. Cunningham’s monumental public sculptural installations/ alternative memorials are permanently sited in public collections in Cologne, Kassel, Bad Hersfeld, and Cornberg, Germany, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, N.J., Griffiss International Sculpture Park, Rome, NY and Franklin and Marshall College. Temporary installations were formerly sited at UN Plaza, New York, 1997-1998, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, CUNY Graduate Center, 42nd St, and in Tribeca. She received numerous grants from the Bronx Council on the Arts, a Fulbright Senior Research fellowship, Berlin, and the Pa. Council on the Arts.