Through site-specific installations, Bryony Roberts addresses democracy, spatial justice, historic preservation, and identity The orderly and predictable rhythm of the street grid dominates downtown Chicago, and Federal Plaza is perhaps one of the best examples of the city?s organizing principle. Built in the 1970s with urban renewal funds, it?s lined with square white granite slabs and is empty except for an enormous vermillion sculpture by Alexander Calder. It?s surrounded by towering modern skyscrapers, all with their own monolithic, rectangular grids.
So when Bryony Roberts, an architect based in New York, and Asher Waldron, a choreographer with the South Shore Drill Team, flooded this space with young, African-American performers for the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015, it was a profoundly subversive act. The group?dressed in white shirts, black skirts and pants, and emerald sequins?entered the space in orderly lines, hewing to the grid around them as they twirled ceremonial white rifles and flags and marched in steady cadence. Soon, a military-style drumbeat transitioned into rhythmic horns, all but drowning out the thrum of South Dearborn Avenue, and the performers? choreography loosened into grooves that riff on HBCU marching bands and hip-hop. Federal Plaza was transformed by the bodies inhabiting it in their own defiantly distinct way. The unrelenting grid momentarily took a back seat while some of the city?s most marginalized bodies commanded attenti...