Counterpublic 2019

Counterpublic 2019

April 13th -
July 13th, 2019

The Luminary announces Counterpublic, a triennial exhibition scaled to a neighborhood set to animate the everyday spaces of Cherokee Street with expansive artist commissions, performances, processions, and public programs.

Opening Reception:
April 13th from 1 - 6 pm

Counterpublic is a triennial public art exhibition scaled to a neighborhood. 

Counterpublic 2019 will bring groundbreaking contemporary art to the barbershops, bakeries, parks, and taquerias that anchor Cherokee Street and the surrounding neighborhoods of South St. Louis and act as gathering spaces for the many communities living in the area.

The project centers on a series of thirty-plus site-responsive commissions in venues as divergent as a tea shop, punk club, former sanctuary, Buddhist temple, Mexican panaderia, and community-organized park and basketball court. Works will range from architectural interventions to archival community-led sessions, meal-based gatherings to dramatic public processions. Spanning three months from April 13th to July 13th, the project is meant to be a layered, nuanced neighborhood-based platform that engages the complex community organizing, conflicted politics, radical openings, and distressing developments that intertwine within Cherokee Street and its surrounding neighborhoods. Together, Counterpublic intends to advance new contexts of liberation, care, complexity, and dissent into the everyday spaces of a neighborhood through responsive commissions and intentional intersections among the many publics and counterpublics of this place.

For a full list of artists and programs, please visit the Counterpublic website.

Lead support for Counterpublic 2019 comes from the Whitaker Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Regional Arts Commission, Siteman Family Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council, as well as the numerous individual members of The Luminary.