What does citizenship mean?

This is the question posed by artist Tom Scicluna with Channel Park Bench, an outdoor bench made of perforated steel planks with thermo-plastic coat finish and steel pipe, which reads “CITIZENSHIP.” As anti-homeless benches /hostile architecture increase in popularity across the country and immigration laws are being called into question, this piece begs the viewer to think about who qualifies as a citizen and who gets left in the margins of society.

Artist Statement:

“Channel Park Bench is a fully accessible, readymade public bench conceived as a civic-orientated sculpture. Purchased from a commercial outdoor furnishings website, Channel Park Bench is the third in a series of reified bench products, which feature a customizable text application based on predetermined and ideologically charged advertising-based renderings and illustrations. Functioning as both a physical and participatory object, Channel Park Bench serves as an active and critically engaged marker of public space.”

Artist Bio

Tom Scicluna (b. 1974 London, UK) lives and works in Miami, FL. Scicluna received a BA in Contemporary Art Practice from the University of Northumbria, UK, and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Miami, FL. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida International University. Scicluna’s practice includes site-based sculptures, interventions, and gestures that materially and conceptually respond to the given situation of exhibition. Reconfiguring commercially available objects and discarded materials, Scicluna’s context-informed practice actively engages notions of public space and infrastructure, participation and authorship, production and the conditions of display. Recent shows, projects, and residencies include: Artpace International Residency Program, San Antonio, TX (in conjunction with Oolite Arts); Domain, Nina Johnson, Miami, FL; 2019 Atlanta Biennial: A thousand tomorrows, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Some Aesthetic Decisions: Centennial Celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, FL; and Climate Sync, a public artwork realized in conjunction with Miami-Dade Art in Public Places. His work is in the permanent collections of ICA Miami, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Special thanks to Amaral Custom Fabrications for fabrication and installation partnership.