A metal circular sculpture inside a gothic-style chapel. On the circular shelves, which look like mausoleum crypts, there are carved marble sculptures, stones, fused glass pieces with archival fragments, and concrete urns. Around the circle are fabric tassels that look like fence posts.
A view of the altar with a pile of glacier stones on the floor, arranged in a rectangle the approximate size of a grave.
A series of carved marble fragments on metal shelves. From this angle you can see the carvings, which allude to the body and decorative motifs from the cemetery.
A close up of three carved marble fragments that reference body parts and decorative motifs from the cemetery.
A metal circular sculpture inside a gothic-style chapel. On the circular shelves, which look like mausoleum crypts, there are carved marble sculptures, stones, fused glass pieces with archival fragments, and concrete urns. Around the circle are fabric tassels that look like fence posts.
A series of fused glass pieces standing upright, with handwritten excerpts from burial ledgers.
A close up of carved marble fragments and stones on a series of metal shelves inside a gothic style chapel.
View of the installation from the altar looking towards the entrance. There is a person in the space to show scale and the light is soft.
Carved marble fragments on plaster pillars, with fragments of glass. Soft light falls on them.
A view of the metal shelves looking up. They look like towers. There is a gap between them for people to enter the circle.
A close up of a plaster fragment with kiln-fused glass slumped over it.
A metal circular sculpture inside a gothic-style chapel. On the circular shelves, which look like mausoleum crypts, there are carved marble sculptures, stones, fused glass pieces with archival fragments, and concrete urns. Around the circle are fabric tassels that look like fence posts.
A close up of archival photos on glass depicting damage to cemetery monuments. On one piece there are the typewritten words "removed wild ivy growth."

The Perimeter Path (June 3 – September 4, 2023) is a site-specific installation in The Green-Wood Cemetery’s Historic Chapel. As Green-Wood’s 2022–2023 artist in residence, Renee focused their attention on the cemetery’s public lots. These inexpensive graves, dating from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, are generally located around the cemetery’s perimeter. At first glance, these lots appear nearly empty, with little or no indication of the hundreds of burials within them. Renee, in response, created an abundance of memorials in marble, steel, glass and stone. Accompanied by extensive research in Green-Wood’s archives, their work brings attention to disparities of race and class in memorialization across the cemetery. A series of narrative biographies about people interred in two of these lots – Lot 88 and 5499 – accompanies the exhibition.

The installation is set within an 18-foot circular enclosure that conjures a monument maker’s library of gravestones. Renee spent over a year collecting, arranging and transforming raw materials and found objects from the cemetery’s grounds. These include dozens of marble fragments from Green-Wood’s decommissioned Receiving Tomb – a space once used for temporary storage before burial – which Renee carved into abstract forms that reference the body and decorative motifs from grave markers. Alongside the marble pieces are shards of kiln-formed glass embedded with photographs and notations from Green-Wood’s burial ledgers, found iron bending jigs used to repair monuments and cast concrete replicas of shrouded urns. Renee connects their material process to the labor of funerary work – the carving of memorials, the repair of damaged monuments and the transformation of organic material under extreme heat. Through tending to those at the periphery of our visual and historical record, Renee sees a pathway to uplift those who did not have the privilege to be memorialized. The public is invited to join this act of communal remembrance by adding their own stones to cairns within the installation.

Upcoming Public Programs

Monday, July 10, 2023 – Artist Talk with Neela Wickremesinghe 

Sunday, July 23, 2023 – Walking Tour with Rowan Renee

Sunday, September 3, 2023 – Walking Tour with Rowan Renee

Image credits to Maria Baranova and Rowan Renee

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All Content © Rowan Renee 2020.