A new permanent public artwork by artist and community organizer Shellyne Rodriguez, unveiled last Saturday, November 8, pays tribute to the Bronx’s residents in sculptural form.
Rodriguez’s terracotta, brick, and steel “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx” portrays an ascending ladder with no end, in an artistic testament to the resilience of the borough in the face of adversity.
The monument evokes the rebuilding of the borough after the 1970s fires, according to a press release. During that decade, fires, sometimes initiated by landlords seeking insurance payouts, razed 80% of the South Bronx’s housing stock. The permanent work, commissioned by the city through the Percent for Art program, stands between Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue.
Shellyne Rodriguez unveiled “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx” on Saturday, November 8.
The Bronx-based artist conceived the monument seven years ago. Reached by email, Rodriguez said the conception of the monument came during a time, “when the memorialization of the violent foundations of the United States was collectively being called into question.”
Rodriguez has long revered the Bronx in her artworks, including in a series of portraits documenting fellow political organizers and essential workers during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, activists toppled Confederate monuments across the country, and in New York City, calls by the group Decolonize This Place to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History gained momentum. (The equaestrian statue was finally removed in 2022)
The sculpture is located at Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue.
In her email to Hyperallergic, Rodriguez posed the question: “If abolition is not solely about what we dismantle, but also about what we build in its stead, then what monuments or points of gathering will we, the collective body of the dispossessed who make life on the periphery of empire, make for ourselves as stewards of our own histories and futures which reflect our struggles and our triumphs as a people?”
