THE AESTHETICS OF GENTRIFICATION: Modern Art, Settler Colonialism, and Anti‐Colonialism in Washington, DC

Abstract

In 1988 a local homeowner in Washington, DC, commissioned a 30‐foot mural of an artwork by modernist painter Piet Mondrian on the side of a public housing building, along with several other similar murals across the street. Three months later all the residents of the public housing development were moved out. Later, the buildings were destroyed. Here I explore how these murals enabled the residents’ permanent displacement. Explaining this displacement and destruction by pointing to the federal Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI policy is completely insufficient. I argue for looking beyond the conventional actors in policy history to other actors, such as, but not limited to, aesthetics, art, artists and art purveyors. I examine Mondrian's years in Paris, during which he developed his abstract art and philosophy of spiritual evolution, white supremacy and total urban renewal. The homeowner brought Mondrian's art and philosophy to Washington, DC, at a time of an ideological shift towards global revanchism and gentrification. These specific murals reveal the settler colonial nature of gentrification in confrontation with anti‐colonial art and geographies. This study provides new insight into gentrification by illuminating the battles of multiple globalizations in cities and even on individual blocks.

RACIAL INEQUITY IN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AND GENTRIFICATION: Challenging Compounded Environmental Racisms in the Green City

“…From a postcolonial perspective, white privilege consists of prioritizing Western/white practices as dominant ways of seeing, knowing and behaving. It is illustrated by the persistent unequal treatment and perception of racialized communities when compared to white people, especially in relation to the ‘expected’ aesthetics and design of green and public space and for whom it is created (Young, 2003; Bockman, 2021).…”

Settler aesthetics—Theorizing and contesting settler colonialism through art practice

“…From planning practices not confined by White settler city structures, social movements activism and education reform, collective gardening, community policing, to Afro‐futuristic visions of urbanity they claim art practice along with spatial interventions create new visions of “history, present, and possibility” (Bates et al., 2018, p. 256). For instance, amidst a racially changing and gentrifying district of Washington D.C. artists painted a Pan‐Africanistic mural on a community center to counter the Piet Mondrian murals Johanna Bockman (2021) reads as settler colonial maps. The global affairs scholar argues public art—such as the Piet Mondrian murals in D.C. she examines in her work— can produce and maintain racial hierarchies and colonial ideologies which she calls settler colonial maps.…”

“…The global affairs scholar argues public art—such as the Piet Mondrian murals in D.C. she examines in her work— can produce and maintain racial hierarchies and colonial ideologies which she calls settler colonial maps. Yet, the presence of the Pan‐African mural amidst the removal of Black places and people through gentrification acts as a form of resistance that insists on a Black presence (Bockman, 2021). This placemaking practice of inserting Black aesthetic designs, along with art classes for the neighborhood's youth, signifies a Black sense of place and “Black life” amidst the destruction and erasure through urban renewal.…”