Best of ATL Block Party: Meet Mimi Hart Silver

To celebrate CL’s annual Best of Atlanta issue, and our forthcoming Block Party, the Goat Farm Arts Center curated a physical manifestation of the best the city has to offer. The six chosen installations will imagine a future world based on plausible present technologies, ideas, or milieus. Expect an ambitious cyberpunk-inspired future Atlanta presented in way that has never been done before. The installations for BOA do not deal with the past, but rather what is on the horizon. We’ll be posting interviews with the participating artists leading up to the event. Previous: Meet S. Bedford.
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? Mimi Hart Silver is best known for her 2D work, but the prompt for BOA had her step out of the canvas comfort zone in a serious way. We spoke with the Downtown resident about her inspiration to build “The monuments of our future,” a monolithic fortress of hundreds of sandbags.
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? Tell me more about yourself — who are you and what do you all do?
? This is a tough question. I just turned thirty, which is a pretty significant accomplishment considering I never thought I would live to be twenty-seven. I’m not so interested in myself these days; I just want to have some kind of positive impact in the world.
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? What is the title of your piece and please describe it.
? “The monuments of our future” is a monolithic wall of orange sandbags. It is my vision of a post-apocalyptic future in which the crude devices constructed to preserve the art, artifacts, and architecture of our past become the monuments of our future. Think modern day Monuments Men.
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? How did South Broad Street inspire your concept?
? A connection to South Broad Street came after the project’s inception and was honestly a happy accident that I can take no credit for. Sometimes the artist is just a sieve I guess. Goat Farm Director of Operations Mark DiNatale pointed out that South Broad is the heart of Atlanta and divides the city both socioeconomically and racially. The north-facing side of the installation is a fortress and the south-facing side a memorial. It is a pretty bold statement in this context and a lot more interesting than the heady conceptual stuff I was mulling over in the beginning.
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? Going off the loose theme of time, what does your installation have to do with the future of Atlanta?
? I don’t think my piece is specific to the future of Atlanta. Every city is experiencing similar crises. Maybe if we imagine the future’s landscape we will be more concerned with changing the now.
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? What is the best thing about Atlanta?
? I love my friends here and the Clermont Lounge.
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? Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself?
? I am most interested in racial relationships in the South and this country and globally, so I am pleased that this dialogue entered the project unintentionally. I heard an artist when asked in an interview what motivates his work say so simply that he has to do what he would die for. Those are my words to live by right now.
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? CL’s Best of Atlanta 2015 Block Party. Free. Fri., Sep. 25, from 6-11 p.m. South Broad Street, between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and and Mitchell Street.