| The pop-up installation by artist Jay Critchley commemorates the yearlong countdown to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims on ancestral Wampanoag land in Provincetown Harbor. The Provincetown Library is pleased to unveil artist Jay Critchley’s pop-up banner installation of the feminist Re-signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020 on Sunday, November 10 at 3:00pm. The event, which is open to the public, marks the yearlong countdown to the 400th anniversary of the first landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor on ancestral Wampanoag land, on November 11, 2020, and the signing of the Mayflower Compact. This installation is part of Critchley’s ongoing project, Democracy of the Land, which takes a deep dive into the pre-Colonial Americas and the ecological devastation of the European invasions. In 2020, it will be 528 years since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. |  |
 | This banner is 6’ wide by 7’ high and is available for loan or exhibition. The Mayflower Compact is the first democratic Colonial document in the “New World”. This historic Christian agreement, signed by forty-one of the 102 passengers, all white men, laid the groundwork for the radical takeover of the indigenous land and peoples. Native Americans were not consulted. Critchley states, “Now is the time for women to hoist the sails of state and take command: to reclaim and recreate a value-added Mayflower Compact - for now and for the future! Caesar said it with flair, as did the Pilgrims: Veni, vidi, vici. We came. We saw. We conquered. And now it’s their turn.” How different would the world be if activist American woman had signed the Compact? This project explores the effects of Colonization of the First Nation peoples of the Americas, and examines the intersection of environment, race, class and gender – past, present and future. The Democracy of the Land project explores the question, what is democracy and how do we define community? To whom do we owe our allegiance? How do people of color, women and indigenous peoples define democracy? What are our dreams? How do we propose to take action? These forty-one female signers are just the tip of the melting icebergs in redressing the treatment of women in our country’s narrative. The signers are creative, activist women from Marion Anderson to Cher, from Audre Lorde to Rachel Carson, from Zora Neale Hurston to Gertrude Stein. And muckraker Ida Tarbell who brought down Rockefeller’s Standard Oil! Other signers include Lucille Ball, Rosa Parks, Whoopi Goldberg and Sojourner Truth. And two of Provincetown’s local exemplars, poet and activist Grace Gouveia and Mary Heaton Vorse, a radical journalist. We also honor the recently elected Congresswomen, two Native Americans - Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids, and two Muslims - Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Jay is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown. |
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