Special to the Sun
Boston Public Art Triennial, formerly known as Now + There, opened Lot Lab 2024 in June with new public art installations by artists, Ifé Franklin and Matthew Okazaki, and a previously commissioned work by Hugh Hayden.
Several free events will be held this month at Lot Lab, a free, outdoor, 24/7 experimentation zone for site-specific contemporary public art in Charlestown Navy Yard at the intersection of 1st Avenue and 5th Street. The public is invited to participate in:
• Mobile Makers Youth and Family Day Workshop, Aug. 10: https://www.thetriennial.org/events/mobile-makers-partner-program-with-mobile-makers
• Senior Coffee Hour with the Kennedy Center of Charlestown, Aug. 15: https://www.thetriennial.org/events/senior-coffee-hour-with-the-kennedy-center-of-charlestown
• Soulful Bliss Arts and Music Festival, Aug. 25: AfroDesiaCity is running the event. https://www.thetriennial.org/events/soulful-bliss-arts-and-music-festival
Lot Lab 2024 is part of the Triennial’s annual event, designed to shift an underutilized space into one where art and community come together. Lot Lab is a continuation of the Triennial’s collaboration with the National Park Service and is also part of the City of Boston’s “Un-monument | Re-monument | De-Monument: Transforming Boston,” a program of temporary artworks, public talks, and engagement activities supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Monument Project. This year’s theme, Presence, guides the three artists as they explore cultural symbols and hidden histories in Charlestown.
This year’s Lot Lab artists are local artist Matthew Okazaki who created TORII, a series of architectural sculptures referencing a nearby symbolic Japanese Torii Gate at the historic Marine Barracks, which rectifies its loss of meaning and cultural heritage. Ifé Franklin, also local to Boston, designed The Resurrection of Mark, Phillis, & Phebe, a floating indigo cocoon sculpture that offers a place of rest for the spirits of three enslaved ancestors. Her work quilts together traditional African adire textiles and cosmology to tell a tale of Black diasporic resistance, honoring Mark, Phillis, and Phebe, who lived in colonial Charlestown and died for their freedom after rebelling against their enslaver. Nationally acclaimed artist Hugh Hayden is recontextualizing Gulf Stream– a surreal, hybrid boat sculpture first exhibited at Brooklyn Bridge Park and on loan courtesy of Lisson Gallery– connecting local histories like that of the enslaved labor that harvested timbers for the hull of USS Constitution to global histories of trade, migration, and labor.