We Would Begin Our Own, 2014
Site-specific installation for the plaza of the Newark Museum, Newark NJ, June - September 2014
We Would Begin Our Own is thirty, 10’ yellow flags, each containing text from an original poem that quotes and remixes lines from John Cotton Dana’s influential essay The Gloom of The Museum (1917).
In that essay, Dana lays out a succinct critique of institutions and offers concrete suggestions for a new model of relations between objects, institutions and the public. In her poem, Elsayed re-shapes Dana’s words to create something between a Newark artist manifesto, a love letter to a city, and a statement of solidarity with the institution that he profoundly shaped.
The three month long installation culminated in a ceremonial lowering of the flags and a parade to the main branch of the Newark Public Library, where the flags now reside.