About the Work

Sandy Williams IV’s installation and film 40 ACRES: Weeksville documents an ephemeral sculpture and public performance in the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on Juneteenth, 2023. At the artist’s request, a skywriter traced the geographic borders of the historic Weeksville community in the sky—an area of roughly 492 acres—to honor the legacy of one of the first recognized free Black communities in the country, which occupied the location from 1838 to around 1930. The skywriting and its documentation pay homage to the memory of Freedmen communities, while addressing histories and forms of social oppression that often are paved over, by connecting current national inequities to the failures of Reconstruction in the United States after the Civil War.

40 ACRES: Weeksville was commissioned by The Shed (NYC) and debuted there in Fall, 2023, as part of the exhibition Open Call. The project was developed in collaboration with the Weeksville Heritage Center, and the flyover took place in conjunction with the Center’s Juneteenth Food Festival. The project also has been generously supported by the University of Richmond.