The Dia Art Foundation has announced that Cameron Rowland awarded the organization the management of its work in 2018 Depreciation, which, like much of their work, explores issues of racism, capitalism and power. The main element of the work is a single acre of land on South Carolina’s Edisto Island and its associated legal status; the land, which was part of the former Maxcy Place plantation, was one of the portions of land given to former slaves under General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Orders of 1865, No. 15, which granted each beneficiary “forty acres and a mule”. The acre was one of many taken over by Confederate landowners after President Andrew Johnson in 1866 rescinded orders following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson offered former slave owners the option of sharecropping for white takeovers or being deported and likely arrested for being homeless under the vagrancy clauses of black codes. The revocation of the orders affected 10,000 people released on Edisto Island alone.
Rowland in 2018 purchased this particular parcel through a nonprofit company, 8060 Maxie Road Inc., formed for the purpose and named after the address of the parcel. They then placed the land under a covenant, prohibiting further development and use and thus reducing its value to zero dollars. The restriction remains whether the package changes hands or not.
The management of the works by Dia constitutes a long-term loan. “We are delighted to enter into this long-term agreement with Cameron Rowland to preserve the integrity of the work and promote important dialogue around its design principles,” Dia director Jessica Morgan said in a statement.
“As a site that challenges notions of ownership, land tenure, and artistic pilgrimage, Depreciation productively complements and challenges existing Dia sites,” said Dia curator Jordan Carter and the associate curator Matilde Guelli-Guidi in a joint statement. “In this context, it critically displaces the terms of engagement of Land art and proposes new urgencies, challenges and possibilities within the institution and the field.
The ground will not be open to the public, who, according to a statement from Dia, are “discouraged” from visiting. Affiliated documents – a land survey and official documents confirming the purchase of the plot and its legal status – will be presented to the long-term Dia Chelsea branch in New York this month. Dia Beacon will host an exhibition of Rowland’s works, curated by Carter, in the spring of 2024.
