Postcolumn

Name Sheldon Bess
Class MFA 2021
Materials Corian, MDF, and steel
Dimensions

15 x 15 x 75 in / 381 x 381 x 1905 mm

Neoclassical columns originating from 18th Century American Federalist architecture are specters of a constructed power built from histories of the hunt and the commodification of the Other. These histories constantly haunt us with the homogeneous narrative of white supremacy and capitalism. Postcolumn is a manufactured architectural ruin that employs CNC ornamentation on a pseudo stone material to materialize the inflection point where the decline of the American Empire narrative meets the incline of emancipated otherness—a consciousness that exists free for itself.

Pengelly, Martin. “Trump Wants to 'Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again' with Neoclassical Order." The Guardian, Feb. 4, 2020.