The Living Watch over the Living ii consists of marionette-like angels suspended from the ceiling of a storefront window of the Volksbuehne Pavilion in Berlin. Made of colorless hand-blown glass, the angels boasted long cylindrical heads and bell-shaped drapery. The Statue of Liberty recurred in a video, which played on a small box monitor that hung among her sculptures, depicting activist Therese Patricia Okoumou’s July 2018 protest against the separation of migrant families at the U.S.–Mexico border. Okoumou climbed the monument to call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), bringing her message to a global audience of millions. With this reel of found footage Silverman activated a complicated politics of antiracist solidarity and exemplified the Arabic term, Shahid, referring to both a witness and a martyr. Positioning Okoumou as an angel, the installation affirmed queer theory’s argument that actions that deviate from the vicious continuity of heteronormativity are disruptive and transformative.
The Living Watch over the Living ii consists of marionette-like angels suspended from the ceiling of a storefront window of the Volksbuehne Pavilion in Berlin. Made of colorless hand-blown glass, the angels boasted long cylindrical heads and bell-shaped drapery. The Statue of Liberty recurred in a video, which played on a small box monitor that hung among her sculptures, depicting activist Therese Patricia Okoumou’s July 2018 protest against the separation of migrant families at the U.S.–Mexico border. Okoumou climbed the monument to call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), bringing her message to a global audience of millions. With this reel of found footage Silverman activated a complicated politics of antiracist solidarity and exemplified the Arabic term, Shahid, referring to both a witness and a martyr. Positioning Okoumou as an angel, the installation affirmed queer theory’s argument that actions that deviate from the vicious continuity of heteronormativity are disruptive and transformative.