Just Art: The Monument Project

I am a rising junior at Harvard College studying Art, Film & Visual Studies and History & Literature. I am a Canadian, Muslim woman of Indian ethnicity and my parents are Kenyan immigrants; my various backgrounds have shaped my value of pluralism and investment in social justice. I have written and spoken, at TEDx events and international competitions, about topics ranging from racial injustice to Islamophobia. I have sought to use public speaking and writing as vehicles to raise awareness, evoke empathy, and give voice to the marginalized; in the past few years, I have begun to explore the provocative ways in which film can allow me to do these things and more.Through my both filmmaking and creative writing (www.kianarawji.me), I seek to close distances between people without erasing differences between them. I hope to tell stories that illuminate and celebrate the diversity and unity of the human condition.

Today, artists have the capacity not just to reflect, but also to reimagine the world around them. Theirs are the visions that grease the gears of social and cultural change. If art is often the work of dreaming justice, what if we could bring together a group of such dreamers to imagine, together, a more just world? 

Through an innovative online platform that facilitates artistic collaboration and mass participation, The Monument Project will provide a space for young people to communicate through a common language and towards a common goal. 

Public art has never really been "public". There is a need for mass engagement and inclusive participation in the construction of public arts, especially monuments. The Monument Project is all about public art made both by and for a public. It will allow young citizens to critically interrogate and reimagine public monuments, themselves, all working together to figure out what just monuments should look like.

The project will launch with an overarching prompt: as the nation is increasingly interrogating statues that represent an unjust past/present, what can a monument to justice look like? Users will collaborate to reimagine national monuments (Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, etc.)

Using innovative collaborative technologies, including possibilities like AR and locative media, the platform will allow anyone to put in a bite-sized contribution in re-designing, reimagining, repurposing, rewriting prominent national monuments. 

The project will eventually extend to in-person to "Artathons" in different cities, where young artists will come together to redesign local monuments.

See the Johnny Cash Project as an example of mass artistic participation around a prompt towards a common goal. http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/

If our generation really is going to change the world, as many often tell us, we say, let this project be the drawing board, where young people can work together, through the avenue of artwork, to figure out what the future we are striving for should look like. Justice starts with a vision; The Monument Project is where that vision can be shaped.Young people are the future, and young artists have an essential role to play. 

This project will also be essential in establishing a network of young student artists—especially students of color—who can support one another, collaborate with each other in the future, and find an virtual inclusive, artistic community in each other, which is largely lacking right now. But it also includes those who don't typically identify themselves as "artists"

This past year, a team of 15 students worked together to plan a cambridge/boston wide undergrad arts festival. We spent the past year planning the festival. Due to pandemic, postponed, we’ve put that project on hold. Instead, we’ve been thinking about ways to see through the same mission—bringing artists together to do the work of justice—online, because it seems now more urgent than ever. 

We’ve seen virtual museums/showcases of work online, but what there’s a need for creative collaboration to start drawing the blueprints of a better society. Art is imagining things we haven’t seen before. Which is why Artists and their creativity is central to reimagining what our society should look like.

Collaborative art, just like any successful social justice work or movement, is a group effort. It’s that collaborative, creative spirit in the service of social justice that we think this project will cultivate in an exciting way. 

As mentioned, I am particularly passionate about the intersection of social justice and art, so this is a very close to heart problem to me.

See bio 

(Apologies, we just found out about this grant and are submitting very last minute, hence the short responses)

We are in the early stages 

www.gentr.com - lead this non profit

lead a team to make a documentary on the school to prison pipeline in Boston

lead team to organize arts festival in Cambridge