Sharing Life in The Projects

A powerful and memorable piece is Many Mansions (1994) by Kerry James Marshall. Speaking on his persona experience living in and seeing public housing projects being marketed in the Chicago area as “gardens”. Marshall decided to begin The Garden Project. This piece (pictured below) expresses themes of community, race, and commentary on deceiving urban community branding in America. This piece shows three Black men tending to flowers together outside of a city while wearing suits and ties. Written on the buildings in the landscape is, “IL 2-22” which is the Stateway Gardens registration number indicating the men are coming together as a community in this specific Illinois public housing project. In the introduction of the Educator Resource Packet provided by AIC Marshall recounts, “I see that there are three other housing projects called ‘gardens’... They look like everything else but a garden... Isn’t there an irony there?” (Marshall, AIC). Marshall in later articles shares about growing up in the housing project Nickerson Gardens (Bomb, Marshall, p. 45). Many Mansions highlights the irony he speaks on with the beauty of the garden and the nice clothing the men are wearing as they stand beneath the housing identification. They are surrounded by blue birds carrying ribbons across a worn-down sign signifying a false sense of a fantastical space they are existing in and preserving together. These details connect the piece to issues in economic segregations as well as the dehumanization and social reduction of powerful Black communities to numbers and a pretty word on a neglected sign.