“As our ancestors moved between the worlds of enslavement and freedom, an innumerable fact existed…that everyone was transported beyond the familiar...”
Radcliffe Bailey, from The Portal (project description)

Working with Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey (1968-2023), our team developed a response to an invited competition from Davidson College to “propose a permanent, interactive space, and artwork” to commemorate the exploited labor of enslaved Africans that built Davidson College, and provide a permanent memorial to their families still within the community. 

The project is sited with a purposeful relationship between Eumenean and Philanthropic Halls - historic buildings built with slave labor and used for public debates (each with built-in porticos facing off across a public space).  The commemorative memorial - off axis to preserve existing trees and to diverge from the historic symmetry - presents a portal between worlds and provides a physical platform for the formerly dispossessed as full participant with in the space of the campus and ‘debate’ of public space.