Artist Janet Echelman, known for her magnificent large-scale sculptures, is dedicating her latest work to the Civil Rights Movement.
"Bending Arc," as her new piece is called, is taking up residence in the middle of a park in St. Petersburg, Florida that overlooks the Pier District, where residents protested segregation in the 1950s. Those same protests eventually led to the 1957 US Supreme Court ruling allowing people of all races to use the municipal beach and swimming pool.
The work's name echoes Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.'s famous words: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
The structure itself is visually arresting: 72 feet tall and 242 feet long, it is made up of 180 miles of twine and 1,662,528 knots that constantly move with the wind. The strands are made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), an engineered fibre.
The sculpture's colors are also meaningful: Echelman was inspired by by the hues "and patterns of beach umbrellas illustrated on old postcards and from marine bernacles that live beneath the pier," according to Dezeen.
In the past few months especially, Americans' relationships to monuments and sculptures have become ripe territory for discussions about race and social issues. As Echelman erects her piece in Florida to honor the Civil Rights Movement, confederate monuments in cities across the country are being forcibly pulled down or removed by officials—also a form of commentary on race relations. Art is, indeed, intertwined with reality.
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