The Railings (May, 1970)

New York-based artist Tom Burr’s minimal sculptural installation investigate the body’s relationship to the built environment. The Railings (May, 1970) positions the well-known queer French novelist and playwright Jean Genet as a stand in for the artist.

In 1968 Genet traveled to Chicago to core the Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine, and he witnessed firsthand the brutal response of the police to protestors. There he also made contact with members of the beleaguered Black Panther Party. Sharing their commitment to racial and class equality, Genet returned to the United States in 1970 to advocate on their behalf. Genet, a white, gay man, and the Panthers, a radical black network of civil rights activists, proceeded to collaborate on a series of campus speeches. This culminated in a May Day event in Burr’s hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, for which Genet wrote a speech as a call to action against racism and black oppression. The entirety of the address into the polished is etched into the polished steel grip of the 103-foot-long handrail of The Railings.

Inscribed onto the fence, the “May Day Speech” links Burr, Genet, and the Panthers within a continuum of social and political address that transgresses the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality. The sculpture, taking the form of a code-complaint railing, imposes oder and regulation while simultaneously communicating a provocative message of resistance.