A large-scale recurring art festival isn’t necessarily a new idea, but The Luminary is mounting one that functions in novel ways. Counterpublic, opening this weekend, is a triennial art happening that applies the expansive format to a very specific place—and to the concerns, hopes, and dreams of its particular human inhabitants.
The Cherokee Street neighborhood, home to the newly renovated Luminary, makes for an excellent first space to infiltrate. (Other neighborhoods will be investigated in future Counterpublics.) A variety of public art projects will be at non-gallery spaces across the neighborhood through July, providing unexpected encounters with art and posing questions from diverse voices.
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The neighborhood has connection and friction points aplenty. Cherokee Street has harmonious and occasionally tense relationships among longtime residents and newly arriving artists and entrepreneurs. Four neighborhoods and two wards intersect, and the area is majority black with a very strong Latinx and immigrant population. The street and the area serve as a microcosm for concerns citywide, regionally, and nationally.
Post-Ferguson, St. Louis has been at the forefront of self-inquiry into how racial and other differences manifest for different people. There is a momentum of inquiry happening in the city, and the Luminary’s project can be seen as an extension of it.
“St. Louis has again and again been leading the conversation,” says Luminary founder and caretaker James McAnally. McAnally and his co-founder and co-caretaker (and wife) Brea McAnally, alongside curator Katherine Simone Reynolds, organized the event.
“We’re at such a cultural crossroads—nationally, internationally. Our present moment is requiring these inquiries. St. Louis artists and community leaders are leading that inquiry.”
The Luminary is taking aim at these inquiries and many more with the ambitious, three-month multi-site public art platform. Dance and movement performances, screenings, residencies, organizing, food, drink, philosophical inquiry, and podcasting are just a few of the media that fall under the umbrella of the project.
“The whole project is rooted in, ‘How does art connect with the everyday life of this community?’” says McAnally. “Every project is meant to connect to the audience of the place it will be situated in.”
The event will include a session with the street’s aldermen, where anyone can come and ask questions. Diana’s Bakery will sell a custom artist-designed cookie to benefit Latinos en Axion STL, a social justice organization by and for Latinx peoples of various nationalities in the city. At Cherokee Buddhist Temple, outdoor chairs cast in birdseed will slowly be eaten away, echoing the Buddhist value of non-attachment. Many more site-specific projects are planned, from artists such as Addoley Dzegede, Cauleen Smith, Jen Everett, Kahlil Robert Irving, and NIC Kay.
“We really think that this project is pretty unprecedented,” says McAnally. “It’s one of the largest public art platforms, not just in St. Louis but one of the most ambitious in the Midwest in general.”
The Luminary, explains McAnally, is interested in art that moves beyond the gallery walls and into the city, into the places where residents live and spend time. Counterpublic, then, serves as a kickoff for an overall new direction for the Luminary—taking art to the people, rather than waiting for them to arrive.
“We really see it as a kind of bold sign of where we’re headed,” he says. “We’re going to keep pushing that envelop of where you experience art, how it connects with peoples’ lives in this specific region.”
Counterpublic opens this Saturday. Between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., curatorial tours, artists talks, and performances are on offer, starting at the Luminary (2701 Cherokee). Walking tours depart the space at 2 p.m. at 3:30 p.m. At 5 p.m., multidisciplinary indigenous artist Demian DinéYazhi performs at Foam (3359 S. Jefferson).
Visit the website frequently to plan your interactions throughout the summer.
