In 2019, the Floating Museum introduced the world to an inflatable monument named “Founders,” a sculpture that featured four visages — interpretations of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable; his wife, Potawatomi tribe member Kitihawa; Harold Washington; and the face of a young child. The busts featured a pattern inspired by Potawatomi textiles. The 25-foot by 35-foot by 34-foot sculpture highlights and elevates stories of Indigenous people and people of color, and their roles in shaping our world.
In 2022, the Floating Museum collaborated with Indian artist Kushala Vora to produce a second inflatable, entitled “The Garden.” Vora looked at colonial plant histories between India and the United States and the impact the plants have in their respective landscapes. The sculpture was both a performance platform and a catalyst for conversation on plants’ role with the movement of people — plants like cotton, black pepper, poppy, rice and clove.
On Aug. 9, the Floating Museum’s Floating Monuments series continues with a third inflatable — this one centers on architecture and the erasure of history. It’s “for Mecca,” a mashup structure that people can walk through. Artist and museum co-director Faheem Majeed calls it a mashup since notable original Bronzeville buildings are represented throughout — from the Regal Theater, to the Plantation Café nightclub, the Chicago Defender, Pilgrim Baptist Church and Mecca Flats, an apartment building central to Black Chicago. And just like “Founders,” a pattern will rest on the “Mecca” inflatable, one that makes the inflatable look like an apparition from a distance, but as you walk up, the pattern disintegrates. Museum co-director Andrew Schachman says it’s like holding sand in your hand.
“There’s a lot of little Easter eggs in there too,” he said. “It’s an amalgam of sites that were destroyed or repurposed, or whose use changed significantly. The interior of the ‘Mecca’ is the interior of this inflatable, even though it has a collage of different buildings that were demolished or changed use over time, but that site is on top of the ‘Mecca.’ We’re conjuring a ghost that’s beneath our feet at the August 9th event.”
The arts collective that explores relationships between art, community, architecture and public institutions researched Chicago’s history of urban renewal, which Schachman said destroyed and erased a lot of development in the past. Tearing down buildings with history “creates a kind of amnesia, so people forget all the contributions of people, because the scenography of those contributions disappears.”
Skyla Hearn, lead archivist on the project, found information on Mecca Flats at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature (located at the Woodson Regional Library), the Chicago History Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and the Library of Congress. She said her blood pressure spiked when seeing imagery of the fight to keep the Flats community whole, but ultimately it was stripped from them.
“It makes you angry because you feel like: we’re always fighting. When will we not have to fight anymore? And then you realize that the battle is continuous,” she said. “It was a Black cultural space, it wasn’t only a residence, because there is evidence that artists were inspired to create works from their engagements of being in this building and being with the people who lived in the building.”
A Tribune report from 1891 celebrated Mecca Flats’ decadence and touted it as the “largest apartment house west of New York.” Built in 1891 for visitors to the World’s Fair of 1893, the Romanesque-style structure held 98 units. Building management rented exclusively to white tenants when it opened. Decades later, Black families moved to the Mecca. While tenants were working class, the area provided a venue where bustling nightlife flourished, eventually making Mecca synonymous with the glamour/grandeur of the Black metropolis. Mecca Flats was memorialized by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “In the Mecca,” a 1969 National Book Award finalist.
Mecca Flats stood for nearly six decades before its destruction. The apartment building had fallen into disrepair and despite Black residents and state legislators fighting for years to preserve the space, the Illinois Institute of Technology acquired and demolished it in 1952 to expand its campus. Mies van der Rohe designed the S.R. Crown Hall, which opened in 1956. “For Mecca” will be installed at the site of the original building, in front of Crown Hall.
Just as Founders moved around Chicago, “for Mecca” will pop up around the city, in earnest next spring and summer with a curriculum that is still developing. Museum co-founders envision “Mecca” popping up around public schools, libraries and parks to engage with people of all ages. Unlike the previous sculptures, this one has an interior, so inclement weather doesn’t interrupt learning opportunities. The co-founders are excited that “Mecca” will connect history, aesthetics, science, technology, poetry and music together.
The public can first experience “Mecca” from 1:30-6 p.m. Saturday. The premiere features a trailer of a film based on Brooks’ poem and a series of performances by artists whose practices center around experimenting with forms of public speech, staged by the Center for BLK Verse — an ongoing endeavor that avery r. young, museum co-founder and inaugural poet laureate of Chicago, will curate.
“The work that we do at the Floating Museum is really about us giving a platform for other artists,” young said. “With the Center of BLK Verse… the idea is not just written language, but experimental, the soundscape. Mecca Flats, the idea is that it’s mythical. It pops up here and pops up there.”
Hearn said the Mecca Flats research, though heavy, is continuing. She said the “Mecca” inflatable could reach an international audience because the concept of urban renewal and displacement are not new or only connected to Chicago — it’s connected to the world.
“I think it is imperative that we understand what power we have as individual people, as groups, and how it is that we can protect our cultural heritage,” she said. “We have to ensure that we’re not the only ones who are holding the information… we have to encourage, we have to educate. We have to rely on ourselves. We look at these brick and mortar structures, physical structures as monuments, we have to always remember that we ourselves are monuments as well, and our memories are strong.”
