After several months of meeting and planning—not to mention disagreements and conflicts—several artists/activists have completed A People’s Monument to Anti-Displacement (PMAD). The Brooklyn Museum has kept up their part of the agreement to include the work into Agitprop! as a running inclusion to the 3rd wave of additions on April 6th, 2016.
PMAD’s first iteration focuses on the realities of gentrification and displacement in Brooklyn, giving vital statistics and visual data to help people understand the crisis. PMAD also highlights the work being done by Movement to Protect the People (MTOPP) to save Crown Heights/Flatbush from rezoning. Rezoning the second most affordable community in Brooklyn would undoubtedly destabilize the community and displace countless families of color, there for we stand behind MTOPP’s strategy of non-participation on the part of the community to fight rezoning in Crown Heights/Flatbush.
More information on the anatomy of PMAD to come.
Antonio Serna is an artist working in New York with both a collective and studio based practice. He is currently working on ‘Documents of Resistance’ and ‘Collective Timelines’ two pedagogical projects that focus on the history of artists and workers of color. Additionally he is a member of Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group which organized “What Do We Do Now?” the first alternatives economies fair and resource guide for artists in NYC. Through these and other autonomous collectives he promotes self-organized cultural events, research, education, and artist-as-activist interventions.
Antonio also maintains a productive studio practice as a place of experimentation, reflection, and as a balance to working collectively. He has recently developed artCommons, an art-sharing platform for studio artists.
Originally from Texas, Antonio has participated and organized projects in New York, Texas, Las Vegas, Spain, Mexico, Berlin, and Romania. Antonio Serna holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from Parsons School of Art.