In Chronotopophobias artist Tia-Simone Gardner explores the landscapes of her childhood—
Black and bitter and sweet. Drawing on historical images, still photos pulled from drone footage,
and documents and recreations of the man-made natural barriers, Gardner invites us into
Fairfield, Alabama, an all-white town on which rose a nearly all-Black town compacting the same soil,
sameness and not sameness. She invites us to contemplate the design of space across scales and state lines
and histories. Whose bodies are subject to control in the landscape? Whose have the right to
linger on our streets? The high berms that divide Palestinian communities from Jewish settlements,
the raised metal strips that divide a bench into thirds lest one of our neighbors seek to lay down,
the double row of trees of a greenwashed racial barrier:
These design elements are not created by chance.
All cities are designed. The best places, and the worst ones, are planned with intention,
and have been for some time. How can we use our bodies to sense the past,
what is present in the earth beneath our feet,
or in the steel and concrete
we drift by every day?
