Stone Maps (Ruttier for the Dispossed) Opening Reception

Boston Ujima Project is a cooperative business and investment ecosystem, built by and for Boston's working class Black, Indigenous and communities of color. JOIN TODAY! www.ujimaboston.com

Boston Ujima Project Inc.

Come celebrate Stone Maps and Williams’s 2026–27 residency at Ujima!

Copp's Hill Terrace

Kiyan Williams, the Mayor's Office of Arts &amp; Culture, Boston Ujima Project, Inc. and the new Center for Art, Invention &amp; Uncommon Practice (CAIUP) are elated to invite you to an evening celebrating the launch of Stone Maps (Ruttier for the Dispossessed) , a public installation by Kiyan Williams, and the beginning of Williams’s term as CAIUP’s Artist-in-Residence. Schedule3-4 PM | Live Music + Viewing4-5 PM | Opening Remarks &amp; Poetry5-6 PM | Dinner6-9PM | Dance Party

About the Project“An oral ruttier is a long poem containing navigational instructions that sailors learned by heart and recited from memory. The poem contained the routes and tides, the stars and maybe the taste and flavor of the waters, the coolness, the saltiness; all for finding one’s way at sea.”–Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No ReturnEntanglements is a series of sculptural and architectural interventions that trace the histories embedded in the landscape and built environment of Boston. The first site-responsive installation, Stone Maps (Ruttier for the Dispossessed) is an earthwork composed of braided, monolithic stones situated on Copp’s Hill Terrace in the city’s North End. Overlooking Boston Harbor, the installation lies at the heart of the former New Guinea settlement, one of the first Black communities in Boston (and colonial America); and is adjacent to Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, where over 1000 Black Bostonians are buried in unmarked graves. Among the unmarked graves are believed to be Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first Black woman to publish a book of poetry, and her child.As a point of departure, Williams retraced the transatlantic voyage of the ship the Phillis that trafficked Wheatley Peters from her birthplace of Senegambia to Boston in 1761. The artist gathered volcanic basalt stones from along the coast of Dakar, including Gorée Island, a colonial-era slave trading post. At Copp’s Hill Terrace the stones are arranged in a quincunx, or an “x”, which symbolizes energy radiating in all directions, the crossroads between the earth and the cosmos, and a convergence across time and geographies. The stones form a cosmogram that aligns with the Sun, Polaris, and other celestial bodies during the summer and winter solstices to trace the nautical routes between the United States, Senegal, and England, mapping the transatlantic networks that shaped the life of Wheatley Peters and more broadly the landscape of Boston.Drawing its title from Dionne Brand’s seminal text A Map to the Door of No Return, the installation is a sculptural ruttier, a compass to navigate perpetual uprootedness, and a wayfinder for the infinite possibilities for living and being in diaspora.Entanglements is a multi-part commission by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-Monument initiative, supported by grants from VIA Art Fund and the Mellon Foundation.

About Kiyan WilliamsWorking fluidly across sculpture, installation, performance, and interventions in public space, the artist <a href="http://www.kiyanwilliams.com/" title="http://www.kiyanwilliams.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Kiyan Williams</a> has built a practice that traces legacies of dispossession and diasporic subjectivity embedded in the landscape and built environment. With a sensitivity to the relationship between material and place, and informed by architecture, archaeology, and ecology, Williams’ practice attunes us to the histories that hum beneath the surface of the soil. In their elemental works the earth and weather are both protagonists and collaborators.Williams’ work has been exhibited across the country and internationally at: The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Hirshhorn (Washington D.C.), ICA Boston (Boston), The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), MIT Vera List Center (Cambridge), and Paula Cooper Gallery (New York). Their debut institutional solo exhibition, Between Starshine and Clay, was presented at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) in 2022. In 2022 they presented their first public art work in New York City commissioned by Public Art Fund in the group exhibition Black Atlantic. Williams was included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing.Their work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications including <a href="https://justsmilemagazine.com/home/kiyan-williams-revisits-the-fissure" title="https://justsmilemagazine.com/home/kiyan-williams-revisits-the-fissure" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">JustSmile Magazine,</a> Text Zer Kunst, The New York Times: T Magazine, Frieze, BOMB Magazine, émergent magazine, and <a href="https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/kiyan-williams-philipp-hindahl-2024/" title="https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/kiyan-williams-philipp-hindahl-2024/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Mousse Magazine</a>. They were recently profiled by The New York Times and Cultured Magazine. Williams is the recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship, Graham Foundation Grant, Franklin Furnace Fund, and Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. They earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from Columbia University.

Stone Maps (Ruttier for the Dispossed) Opening Reception

Good to know

Location

Copp's Hill Terrace

How do you want to get there?

More events from Boston Ujima Project Inc.

Discover more events from Boston Ujima Project Inc., from Arts to other experiences you might love.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all events in Boston and filter by date, category, and more to find the perfect fit.

Stone Maps (Ruttier for the Dispossed) Opening Reception

Good to know

Location

Copp's Hill Terrace

How do you want to get there?

More events from Boston Ujima Project Inc.

Discover more events from Boston Ujima Project Inc., from Arts to other experiences you might love.

You might also like...

Browse more events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all events in Boston and filter by date, category, and more to find the perfect fit.