2019 CHICAGO BIENNIAL

Jackson, Obama, Washington responds to ongoing conversations surrounding the building of the Obama Presidential Library in Jackson Park, in Chicago’s South Side. The historic precedents of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson and Washington Parks, the nearby University of Chicago, and the legacy of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which took place in Jackson Park, weigh heavy on this dialogue and in the neighborhood’s history. Walter J. Hood makes use of everyday objects, histories, and stories for landscape designs and public sculptures that generate new ways to see the beauty, strangeness, and nuances of urban space. Recognizing that the city’s trees bear witness to the history of place and time, Three Trees: Jackson, Obama, Washington relocates fallen trees from the South Side, including Jackson and Washington Parks, to the courtyard of the Chicago Cultural Center, formerly the city’s central public library, effectively transferring memory present in landscape to a new place. Here the trees tell a story of renewal as they emerge out of the mulch of decay. Each one is named for a former US president, anchoring their memory to the park landscape.