NIGHTINGALE
Presented at the MCA • Chicago IL • January 2025
Recipient, Production Fellowship Award from the New Art School Modality in honor of Val Gray West
“Joy Ray’s ongoing replacement and alteration of the Florence Nightingale monument’s missing plaque highlight the fragility of historical memory and the collective participation required to sustain it. The project’s curiosity, process, and self-reflection, combined with her documentation of communal interactions, challenge the monument’s static role and emphasize the value of impermanence and shared care.”
Stephanie Koch, The Teiger Foundation
NIGHTINGALE is an ongoing durational performance/intervention/collaboration with a public monument: a statue of Florence Nightingale located in Lincoln Park, Los Angeles. The monument’s original bronze plaque is missing but its empty plinth remains—a reminder of the fragility and impermanence of history, memory, and knowledge. The methodology consists of multiple phases:
01 Research into the monument’s history (which includes repeated cycles of damage and restoration, as well as conflict between city planners, politicians, and the Western Conservancy of Nursing History); Florence Nightingale and her ongoing importance to the nursing profession; other nearby monuments such as those at El Parque de Mexico (many of which have faced similar or more extreme damage and controversies); Lincoln Park; and Lincoln Heights.
02 Creation of replacement plaques from poured concrete, designed to fit on the empty plinth. Each plaque has a unique engraved message related to the overall project.
03 Installation of a replacement plaque on the plinth. This is typically conducted at night, with a support team to document and assist.
04 Surveillance of the installation is conducted daily to assess and document the condition of the plaque, statue, and park.
05 Disruption of the plaque by the artist and others, including maintenance workers and other unknown entities. To date, plaques have been broken into pieces, shuffled, scattered, moved and removed entirely.
06 Reporting and dissemination of findings at @nightingale.lp on Instagram. To date, (4) plaques have been installed and removed: “White Savior” (June 10- 25, 2024); “Who Am I” (June 25-26, 2024); “LA Times 1974” (July 14-August 10, 2024); and “Help Me” (August 10-September 8, 2024). This ongoing, ritualistic interaction with the monument serves as a portal for closer investigation of the problems and potentialities of monuments and memorialization, as well as historical, political, social and cultural factors impacting the monument, park, and neighborhood.