Permanent Residence

Going to Ground explores Black experiences of home, arrival, precarity, and memory.

TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A new site-specific sculpture on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway uses soil as medium, collective archive, and basis for action. Created by LaRissa Rogers, Going to Ground interprets the history of Zipporah Potter Atkins, the first Black woman to own property in Boston, abstracting the form of the home she purchased in 1670—located on land now part of the greenway—to create a semi-covered, open-air pavilion. The rips and tears in the roof hint at the precarity experienced by many Black Americans. “The time in which Zipporah was living was very hostile, and the time that we’re living in is still really hostile,” Rogers says. “Within public space, [for Black people, there’s] only momentary reprieve. You’re always partially exposed.” The earthen blocks that make up the sculpture’s foundation are made from soil…

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Landscape Architecture (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

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