Damien Davis’ newly installed “Empirical Evidence,” incorporates interwoven shapes that form a new visual lexicon and iconography of symbols from Black history and popular culture. Spanning the east facade of the newly rebuilt 3rd Avenue bridge in Mount Vernon (Westchester County, New York) the 11-panel aluminum artwork provides myriad ancient and contemporary cultural reference and entry points for the multifaceted Mount Vernon community.
“Ultimately, the work is about language and how powerful language can be, for both clarity and confusion. I want all the work I make to serve as a bridge—I think about language as a bridge, and symbols as language,” Davis said. “For me, the question becomes how we take these larger complicated ideas, that can be hard to explain, break them down into simple shapes, and then allow new dynamic, complicated conversations to form around them. That is my hope for this project.”
Fabricated by KC Fabrications, “Empirical Evidence” invites the public into dialogue and interaction, and alludes to Davis’ continued artistic pursuit of questioning how different cultures code and decode representations of Blackness and Black people.
