On Tuesday, June 15th, the Blank Slate: Hope For a New America sculpture arrives in Detroit, accompanied by Blank Slate monument creator Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, for its third stop on a U.S. tour, traveling on a flatbed truck across the country to additional locations that are important to Aftrican American history, including those with a painful legacy of racial injustice and Black perseverance such as Detroit, Louisville, Chicago, Atlanta, Selma, and Birmingham.
At a pivotal time for racial justice in America, where law enforcement brutality has taken the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Duante Wright, and innumerable others, this mobile art installation was created by Ghanian Artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo as a bold counterpoint and challenge to the more than 1,500 Confederate monuments and symbols still on display in public spaces across the U.S.
Public Statue Viewing (Tuesday, June 15 – Wednesday, June 16)
- Outside the Motown Museum at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan
- The Blank Slate statue is available to the public for observation, reflection, and participation in the conversation through an interactive Blank Slate screen at the top of the monument.
Akoto-Bamfo’s mission behind the statue and tour is to use art to forward the racial and social justice movements, help inspire the healing of the nation, and elevate the voices of the silenced and oppressed by giving people a platform to let themselves be heard. The Blank Slate statue has arrived from Louisville, Kentucky and will travel on a flatbed truck from Detroit to Chicago for a Juneteenth celebration, and on to cities across the Midwest and South including Selma, Birmingham, Atlanta, and more. It will remain on display in Birmingham, Alabama until March 2022 when it is moved to a permanent location, determined by a multi-city bidding process.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo is a Ghanaian sculptor best known for his outdoor “Nkyinkyim Installation” sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. He created the Blank Slate statue to challenge the overwhelming prevalence of this legacy by raising awareness of the entrenched issues in each city and inspire a dialogue for a more hopeful future.
Akoto-Bamfo, best known for his outdoor “Nkyinkyim Installation” sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, created the Blank Slate statue to challenge the overwhelming prevalence of this legacy by raising awareness of the entrenched issues in each city and inspire a dialogue for a more hopeful future. The statue is unapologetic in its representation of American history in the midst of today’s racial crisis and is a visual representation of the evolution of the African American experience and struggle— from the millions of enslaved men and women who were crucial to the foundation of the U.S., to the Black soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War, to the more recent lives of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Duante Wright.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo created the Blank Slate statue to pay tribute to the African American experience, challenge the overwhelming prevalence of the Confederate legacy in the United States, and inspire a dialogue for a more hopeful future. The statue is unapologetic in its representation of American history in the midst of today’s racial crisis and is a visual representation of the evolution of the African American experience and struggle— from the millions of enslaved men and women who were crucial to the foundation of the U.S., to the Black soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War, to the more recent lives of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Winston Smith, Duante Wright, and innumerable others.
For more information, visit www.blankslatemonument.com.
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