When looking for monuments, most of the time we look up. But many artists have employed other strategies, from the ground up, to use concrete, bricks, or infrastructure to make their presence felt. Nicole Awai did just that . She is an artist and educator, born in Trinidad, based in NYC and Austin, where she teaches at the University of Austin. She was walking down the street and got hit with inspiration for a monument proposal poster that takes on the legacies of Columbus, colonialism, and the dialectic of exploration and exploitation.

“All of a sudden, I saw it. I saw this access grill point as in the shape of Columbus that said "Reclaimed Water" on it, and that had Columbus's name on the bottom.”

The result, Awai’s monument proposal, Reclaimed Water CC’d, engages the question of what to do with the role of Columbus.

Awai’s Reclaimed Water CC’d is included in the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.