Sisters team up to explore the lives of Black women in Revolution-era New Jersey

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As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, twin sisters Anika Grant and Nandi Jordan are diving deep into the past while envisioning possibilities for the future with their public art series focused on Black women in Revolutionary War-era New Jersey.

“Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds,” a traveling installation that is part of Monument Lab’s “Revolutionary Acts” performance and public art series, will invite people to learn more about Black women during that time period at historic sites in Camden, Fort Lee and Trenton.

The idea is to bring history to life, said Jordan, an artist and sociologist, while “really holding space for these Black women whose experiences might not be even recorded, and then making connections between these women and things we’re experiencing today.”

Jordan said part of the challenge in the research she and Grant are working on now is encountering gaps in archives and historical records because the lives of Black women were “purposefully hidden, obscured.”

But the goal of the series, she said, is to “think of absence as presence.”

“Just because we go in our archive and don’t see the name of somebody and their birth date and their death date and what they did for a living doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist,” she said.

Set to take place this fall, the daylong events in each of the three sites will provide an encounter with those gaps in histories for people of all backgrounds, Grant said.

Building on Jordan’s research, Grant will use her experience as founder and CEO of New Jersey-based Idlewild Experiential to design the events, which may include tea rituals, ceremonial sculpture, site-based performances and art-making workshops.

“We all play a role in this, in creating history,” Grant said. “I think that the thing that we were really excited about, that this was not just an art piece, that this got to be more performance art … and experiential art, is that it gets to live and pass on something to people, and people get to experience something that they can take with them and feel a part of, regardless of what community they come from.”

The artists will work with community organizations in each of the three cities to spread the word and encourage people to attend their free, family-friendly offerings.

Jordan said the project will also provide a new way for people to examine the values and ideals of the Declaration of Independence, 250 years after its signing.

“Founding documents are hopeful documents,” she said. “I think their lack of relevance or connectivity to people on a day to day basis is a fracture … I believe that making space, creating art, creating experiences, can, like, provoke people to kind of fill in those gaps.”

Experiencing “Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds” can also be “an entry point into difficult conversations,” Jordan said.

“How do we talk about conflict? How do we talk about discord,” she said. “It can’t just be yelling from your megaphone. And that’s what I think I certainly learned through my studies in sociology — about the care that you take with people’s stories. And then the question is what to do with it.”

Even if an installation, event or performance piece is not physically permanent, Grant said that what participants take away from it can stay with them for a long time.

“We need to create a story that then comes to life, into something that people can touch, see, smell, whatever, right?” Grant said. “And especially in this digital age, where we’re overconsuming digital content at this point, and it’s to the point where we’re almost numb, these in-person experiences, I think, have greater significance because they create lasting memories, things people carry with them.”

And for the two sisters living on opposite sides of the country — Grant in South Orange Valley, New Jersey, and Jordan in Los Angeles — the project is also a way to meld their talents.

“We’ve been wanting to find ways to work together,” Grant said. “I think what’s also interesting is that this project brings together not just our work practice, but things that are really important and personal to us.”

“Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds” is produced by Monument Lab, in collaboration with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New Jersey Historical Commission and RevolutionNJ.

More information about the project will be released throughout this year on the Monument Lab website.