Once the Gateway to the West and an impetus for expansion and discovery, St. Louis city is now home to over 20,000 vacant lots and buildings. Racialized housing policy and disinvestment have left majority-black areas in the city with 94.5% of all vacant lots and 90.6% of all vacant buildings citywide. Most of these areas are on the city’s Northside.
Occupy Vacancy, in collaboration with André Fuqua, uses city-owned lots to install public art with the aim to acknowledge the collective loss of St.Louis’s neighborhoods while envisioning new futures. This outdoor installation is a call to action to revive the city’s occupancy and to imagine a new legacy for the Northside. We recognize Enright Ave, within the Vandeventer neighborhood, as the previous home to many prominent Black St. Louisans. We want to honor this heritage by highlighting the historical context that disappears when city homes are torn down
