Confederate monuments, reconceived and remixed by Black artists
In a time of rising white supremacy, the rebellious art exhibition known as ‘Monuments’ is likely to be a crowd-pleaser.
By James Hannaham
Published Oct. 24, 2025
Kara Walker's sculpture "Unmanned Drone," created from rearranged parts of a decommissioned equestrian statue of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. • ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV
James Hannaham’s most recent novels are “Delicious Foods” and “Didn’t Nobody Give a S*** What Happened to Carlotta.”
I’m sitting next to Kara Walker, the Black American artist known for works of shocking imagery rooted in the antebellum South, when she opens her phone to show me a screenshot of an email she got from one of Stonewall Jackson’s great-great-grandsons. We’re at a family brunch — she’s my cousin. I’ve been a fan since long before the MacArthur Foundation anointed her a genius at 27, and I love seeing her get her flowers — she’s been celebrated for almost 30 years now. I’m also always a little scared that the public is primed to attack her or her work, starting with the crew of older Black artists who deemed her naive and tried to cancel her in 1997, and rippling out into the rest of the world, particularly the evil randos of racist America and social media.
So I’m guessing the email from Jackson’s heir is going to viciously lambast her for her contribution to “Monuments,” a gigantic, bodacious, very Black group show that just opened in two Los Angeles locations, MOCA Geffen and The Brick, and runs through May 3. It was co-curated by Hamza Walker, who despite the last name is not our cousin (as far as we know). Kara was born in California, but her artist/professor father Larry Walker (my uncle) moved the family to Walker Road in Stone Mountain, Ga., just before she started high school. Stone Mountain is a colossal tribute to Confederate generals (one of many places purported to be the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan) carved into a voluminous granite outcropping. The road had her name, but the stone had it in for her.
Starting in 2015 or so, Hamza Walker began collecting as many decommissioned Confederate statues covered in protesters’ graffiti as he could get his hands on. Many of these statues toppled in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., reaching a peak in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter. Hamza got almost a dozen such statues with the intention of putting them in the transformative hands of Black American artists, a Huey P. Newton-meets-Marcel Duchamp gesture worth its own genius grant, if not an award for Most Gen X Idea Ever.
A work by Martin Puryear, left, is one of the contemporary creations positioned alongside decommissioned Confederate sculptures in "Monuments."ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV/NYT
To Kara he gave the plum, historically speaking: the statue of Stonewall Jackson on horseback that had overseen the violence in Charlottesville. Kara, with the help of 3-D imaging and a foundry, collaged the 12-foot, 9-inch-high patina-laden bronze into a twisted effigy she renamed “Unmanned Drone,” which muddles the man with his horse and also cheekily refers to the Confederate general’s missing arm. The resulting zombie is horrifying to behold but also faintly silly in a Monty Python-esque way, like a Terry Gilliam animation of the two figures commingling after a crash. The piece also brings to light the sad fate of Jackson’s horse, Little Sorrel, who after Jackson’s death became an abused geriatric showpiece. Given this psychotic man/horse mashup, it amuses me to recall that Kara’s a Sagittarius.
So, what did Stonewall Jackson’s descendant William Jackson Christian, who goes by “Jack,” have to say about the human-equine abomination, pictures of which he’d seen in a news article? I read his email to Kara. He called it “a genius refiguring and deconstruction,” congratulated her, and promised to visit the show. Wait — what? It was Oct. 18, and we were surrounded by No Kings demonstrations all over Los Angeles — the opening of “Monuments” was postponed by a day so people could attend both, giving Kara a day of rest — so it felt like a refreshing antiseptic splash to discover that someone who could easily ride the current wave of white supremacy into glory had taken the high road to support this outrageous rethinking, perhaps even mocking desecration, of his own family’s history. Kara immediately posted a screenshot of his email to our BIG FAMILY GROUP CHAT text chain. When she saw the email, she told me later, “My jaw dropped, and I sat in stunned silence for a few minutes. It gave me a feeling of … optimism.”
Maybe Jack’s is the best possible mindset for a white American to have when approaching a show as uncompromising and emotionally volatile as “Monuments.” Its huge, ambitious works and reworks are like the best R&B record of the year — the singles are #1 hits, the deep cuts still slap, and even the weird jams and songs you dislike get stuck in your head. The variety and range is thrilling, and nearly every contribution delivers on its promise. Facing the challenge of speaking directly to the forces that hold us back seems to have brought out the best in this group.
A sculpture that was originally created on commission from the Maryland Daughters of the Confederacy was splashed with red paint in a 2017 protest. Now it's on display in the group exhibition "Monuments" in Los Angeles.ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV/NYT
Not everyone chose to incorporate one of the toppled monuments. The late Nona Faustine contributed nude (except for a pair of white pumps) photographic self-portraits, where she stands on pedestals in New York slave trade locations, that are playful, insubordinate, and complex. Hank Willis Thomas, the artist who created the Embrace sculpture on Boston Common, upended a replica of the Duke Boys’ getaway car, a.k.a. “the General Lee” from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” This work, entitled “A Suspension of Hostilities,” is hilariously juxtaposed with a massive salvaged statue of Jackson and Lee themselves, upon which someone has spray-painted “Beware Traitors.” Yet the next piece along the corridor is the incredibly moving “Homegoing,” Julie Dash’s film memorializing the Charleston, S.C., shooting victims, featuring the bass-baritone of Davóne Tines.
In the next room, Andres Serrano’s photographs of actual Klansmen in their hoods loom from every corner. You laugh, you cry, you’re livid. At least there’s Cauleen Smith’s installation, “The Warden,” to bring in some quiet contemplation. It consists of a decommissioned statue of the “Vindicatrix,” a feminized symbol of the Confederacy, which Smith puts in time-out against a wall while the statue’s upraised (disembodied?) hand appears on several video monitors throughout the space with a blue filter on it; has Smith maybe drowned her?
A crew removed the "Vindicatrix" statue that had sat on a pillar atop the Jefferson Davis Memorial in Virginia in 2020.John McDonnell/The Washington Post
This is the first time in American history when a show like “Monuments” is even thinkable, let alone a big draw and a crowd-pleaser, the way it has been positioned. So it’s heartening to see such emphatic clapback, and great to know that even the scions get it and can groove to it.
Yet atrocious values persist. Already the current regime has plans to resurrect statues pulled down in 2020, including one of Confederate General Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., and another in Arlington similar to the Vindicatrix, at a cost of $10 million. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently sneered at those who dismantled that statue as “woke lemmings.” Let’s hope that woke lemmings will never need to deface and destroy a statue of Hegseth. Not even for the sake of art.
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In a time of rising white supremacy, the rebellious art exhibition known as ‘Monuments’ is likely to be a crowd-pleaser.
By James Hannaham
Published Oct. 24, 2025
Kara Walker's sculpture "Unmanned Drone," created from rearranged parts of a decommissioned equestrian statue of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. • ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV
James Hannaham’s most recent novels are “Delicious Foods” and “Didn’t Nobody Give a S*** What Happened to Carlotta.”
I’m sitting next to Kara Walker, the Black American artist known for works of shocking imagery rooted in the antebellum South, when she opens her phone to show me a screenshot of an email she got from one of Stonewall Jackson’s great-great-grandsons. We’re at a family brunch — she’s my cousin. I’ve been a fan since long before the MacArthur Foundation anointed her a genius at 27, and I love seeing her get her flowers — she’s been celebrated for almost 30 years now. I’m also always a little scared that the public is primed to attack her or her work, starting with the crew of older Black artists who deemed her naive and tried to cancel her in 1997, and rippling out into the rest of the world, particularly the evil randos of racist America and social media.
So I’m guessing the email from Jackson’s heir is going to viciously lambast her for her contribution to “Monuments,” a gigantic, bodacious, very Black group show that just opened in two Los Angeles locations, MOCA Geffen and The Brick, and runs through May 3. It was co-curated by Hamza Walker, who despite the last name is not our cousin (as far as we know). Kara was born in California, but her artist/professor father Larry Walker (my uncle) moved the family to Walker Road in Stone Mountain, Ga., just before she started high school. Stone Mountain is a colossal tribute to Confederate generals (one of many places purported to be the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan) carved into a voluminous granite outcropping. The road had her name, but the stone had it in for her.
Starting in 2015 or so, Hamza Walker began collecting as many decommissioned Confederate statues covered in protesters’ graffiti as he could get his hands on. Many of these statues toppled in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., reaching a peak in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter. Hamza got almost a dozen such statues with the intention of putting them in the transformative hands of Black American artists, a Huey P. Newton-meets-Marcel Duchamp gesture worth its own genius grant, if not an award for Most Gen X Idea Ever.
A work by Martin Puryear, left, is one of the contemporary creations positioned alongside decommissioned Confederate sculptures in "Monuments."ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV/NYT
To Kara he gave the plum, historically speaking: the statue of Stonewall Jackson on horseback that had overseen the violence in Charlottesville. Kara, with the help of 3-D imaging and a foundry, collaged the 12-foot, 9-inch-high patina-laden bronze into a twisted effigy she renamed “Unmanned Drone,” which muddles the man with his horse and also cheekily refers to the Confederate general’s missing arm. The resulting zombie is horrifying to behold but also faintly silly in a Monty Python-esque way, like a Terry Gilliam animation of the two figures commingling after a crash. The piece also brings to light the sad fate of Jackson’s horse, Little Sorrel, who after Jackson’s death became an abused geriatric showpiece. Given this psychotic man/horse mashup, it amuses me to recall that Kara’s a Sagittarius.
So, what did Stonewall Jackson’s descendant William Jackson Christian, who goes by “Jack,” have to say about the human-equine abomination, pictures of which he’d seen in a news article? I read his email to Kara. He called it “a genius refiguring and deconstruction,” congratulated her, and promised to visit the show. Wait — what? It was Oct. 18, and we were surrounded by No Kings demonstrations all over Los Angeles — the opening of “Monuments” was postponed by a day so people could attend both, giving Kara a day of rest — so it felt like a refreshing antiseptic splash to discover that someone who could easily ride the current wave of white supremacy into glory had taken the high road to support this outrageous rethinking, perhaps even mocking desecration, of his own family’s history. Kara immediately posted a screenshot of his email to our BIG FAMILY GROUP CHAT text chain. When she saw the email, she told me later, “My jaw dropped, and I sat in stunned silence for a few minutes. It gave me a feeling of … optimism.”
Maybe Jack’s is the best possible mindset for a white American to have when approaching a show as uncompromising and emotionally volatile as “Monuments.” Its huge, ambitious works and reworks are like the best R&B record of the year — the singles are #1 hits, the deep cuts still slap, and even the weird jams and songs you dislike get stuck in your head. The variety and range is thrilling, and nearly every contribution delivers on its promise. Facing the challenge of speaking directly to the forces that hold us back seems to have brought out the best in this group.
A sculpture that was originally created on commission from the Maryland Daughters of the Confederacy was splashed with red paint in a 2017 protest. Now it's on display in the group exhibition "Monuments" in Los Angeles.ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV/NYT
Not everyone chose to incorporate one of the toppled monuments. The late Nona Faustine contributed nude (except for a pair of white pumps) photographic self-portraits, where she stands on pedestals in New York slave trade locations, that are playful, insubordinate, and complex. Hank Willis Thomas, the artist who created the Embrace sculpture on Boston Common, upended a replica of the Duke Boys’ getaway car, a.k.a. “the General Lee” from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” This work, entitled “A Suspension of Hostilities,” is hilariously juxtaposed with a massive salvaged statue of Jackson and Lee themselves, upon which someone has spray-painted “Beware Traitors.” Yet the next piece along the corridor is the incredibly moving “Homegoing,” Julie Dash’s film memorializing the Charleston, S.C., shooting victims, featuring the bass-baritone of Davóne Tines.
In the next room, Andres Serrano’s photographs of actual Klansmen in their hoods loom from every corner. You laugh, you cry, you’re livid. At least there’s Cauleen Smith’s installation, “The Warden,” to bring in some quiet contemplation. It consists of a decommissioned statue of the “Vindicatrix,” a feminized symbol of the Confederacy, which Smith puts in time-out against a wall while the statue’s upraised (disembodied?) hand appears on several video monitors throughout the space with a blue filter on it; has Smith maybe drowned her?
A crew removed the "Vindicatrix" statue that had sat on a pillar atop the Jefferson Davis Memorial in Virginia in 2020.John McDonnell/The Washington Post
This is the first time in American history when a show like “Monuments” is even thinkable, let alone a big draw and a crowd-pleaser, the way it has been positioned. So it’s heartening to see such emphatic clapback, and great to know that even the scions get it and can groove to it.
Yet atrocious values persist. Already the current regime has plans to resurrect statues pulled down in 2020, including one of Confederate General Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., and another in Arlington similar to the Vindicatrix, at a cost of $10 million. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently sneered at those who dismantled that statue as “woke lemmings.” Let’s hope that woke lemmings will never need to deface and destroy a statue of Hegseth. Not even for the sake of art.
Link / Archive
