Monuments of the Disclosed

In a time when the conversation about monument-making and unmaking are in flux, I wanted to create monuments that spoke to courageous acts of resistance rather than standing for powerful institutions. While each of the nine NFTs represents an individual, the work they risked everything for was for the greater good and so these busts stand for more than themselves.

This project imagines another kind of world with monuments dedicated to under-known heroes. By imagining diverse monuments not at risk of removal by the powers in the digital world, I wanted to emphasize that there is no singular narrative while at the same time present the possibility that these could become real, once distributed in the minds of many.

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse held the highest civilian rank in the United States Army Corps of Engineers when, in 2003, she raised concerns over a no-bid, no-competition $7 billion contract with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) for the repair of Iraqi oil fields. In 2005, after testifying before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee regarding the Halliburton deal, Greenhouse was demoted and stripped of her security clearance. The Department of Defense and Army Corps of Engineers eventually settled the lawsuit Greenhouse brought against them for their retaliation. Greenhouse’s whistleblowing efforts helped galvanize major reforms in wasteful, no-bid government contracting.

On December 30, 2019, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working at the Central Hospital of Wuhan, China, sent a WeChat message to a group of fellow doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of a disease resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Despite requesting discretion, the message leaked and screenshots circulated on Chinese social media. Days later, Li was summoned and interrogated by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau, who accused him of spreading false rumors and disturbing the public order. In early January 2020, Li contracted what was now understood to be Covid-19, was subsequently quarantined, and later died of the infection on February 7, 2020. After his death, an official inquiry exonerated him, the Wuhan police rescinded their previous reprimand, and Li was recognized as a “martyr” by the Chinese government, the highest honor bestowed to citizens.

As a chemist in the Phillippine’s Department of Agriculture, Marlene Garcia-Esperat exposed rampant political grafting practices by government officials. She was subsequently appointed ombudsman within the Department, where she continued to call out widespread corruption, eventually being placed on a witness protection program on account of multiple death threats. After growing impatient with the slow-moving anti-graft prosecutions she initiated, Garcia-Esperat started reporting her findings through a local radio program and newspaper column. On March 24, 2005, Garcia-Esperat was shot and killed in her home in Tacurong City, Mindanao, Philippines. Her murder was orchestrated by two agriculture officials whose corrupt dealings, including ciphoning millions from government contracts, Garcia-Esperat had explosed and investigated for years.

During the 1990s, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo worked for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a senior policy analyst in African affairs. While serving on the Gore-Mbeki Commission, she reported that an American chemical company was exposing South African miners and their families to toxic levels of vanadium. When the EPA refused to act, Coleman-Adebayo alerted outside groups, a decision that prompted multiple retaliatory actions against Coleman-Adebayo within the EPA. In 2000, Coleman-Adebayo won a historic lawsuit against the EPA, which was found to have violated Coleman-Adebayo’s civil rights on the basis of race, sex and color discrimination and a hostile work environment. She provided the leadership for the 2002 passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act (No-FEAR Act), the first US civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century.

In 1992, Phillip Saviano read an article about a Catholic priest who was being sued for abusing children in a New Mexico parish in the 1970s. Saviano recognized the name as the same priest who had abused him and his friends in Douglas, Massachusetts over the course of several years. Suffering from the AIDS virus and assuming he was near the end of his life, Saviano approached The Boston Globe with his story. He was one of the first survivors of the Catholic church sexual abuse scandal to speak out about his experience. With the advent of antiretroviral drugs, Saviano’s health improved and he went on to help other victims tell their stories and to found the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Based on evidence, testimony and stories assembled by Saviano, The Boston Globe published a series of articles in 2002 revealing widespread, systemic abuse by Catholic priests.

Kimberly Young-McLear is a professor, tech expert, former State of the Union Guest of Honor, and highly decorated senior military officer who served in the U.S. Coast Guard between 2003 and 2023. From 2014-2018, while teaching at the Coast Guard Academy, Kimberly endured persistent workplace bullying, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation due to her intelligence, race, gender, and sexuality. In 2018, the Homeland Security Inspector General issued a report finding the Coast Guard violated numerous policies and federal retaliation law. Following a separate 18-month investigation, Congress conducted two hearings and issued a report exposing 8 admirals and abuse of power at the highest levels of the Coast Guard. Ultimately, Commander Young-McLear’s bravery was the catalyst for over 30 Coast Guard policy reforms, key passages within the 2020 Elijah E. Cummings Coast Guard Authorization Act, and two subsequent national defense bipartisan laws. There has never been any justice in her case.

During the 1970s, Karen Silkwood worked as a lab technician at the Cimarron Fuel Production Site, operated by the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation, in Crescent, Oklahoma. As part of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union’s bargaining committee, Silkwood monitored the plant’s healthy and safety practices and found numerous failings, including spills, record falsification, inadequate training, and missing plutonium. Silkwood eventually testified before the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC about her findings. On her way to meet with a New York Times reporter armed with evidence of further safety violations at the plant, Silkwood was involved in a car accident and died. Though police surmised Silkwood had fallen asleep at the wheel, markers on the bumper of her vehicle indicated she was forced off the road.

Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician and public health advocate at the Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan. In 2015, Hanna-Attisha used hospital records to determine that lead levels in Flint children’s blood samples had doubled between 2014 and 2015, a period of time that coincided with the local government’s cost-saving decision to change its water source from the treated Detroit Water & Sewage Department to the Flint River. After going public with her findings, government officials attempted to discredit Hanna-Attisha and her research, which was ultimately confirmed as accurate. For her efforts in exposing the Flint Water Crisis, Time Magazine named Hanna-Attisha one of 2016’s Most Influential People. Hanna-Attisha continues to advocate on behalf of the residents of Flint.

Computer programmer, activist, and entrepreneur, Aaron Swartz was an advocate for free and open access to internet resources. Over his short but influential life, he founded Watchdog.net to provide free access to datasets about politicians; co-founded Demand Progress to support grassroots activism and lobbying initiatives that promote Internet freedom and civil liberties; co-developed SecureDrop, an open-source whistleblower submission system; and provided free access to millions of federal court documents stored in the PACER database. In 2011, Swartz was charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after using an MIT account to log into JSTOR and download over 4.8 million documents. If convicted, Swartz could have faced a $1 million penalty, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release. Swartz died by suicide in January of 2013, two days after failing to reach an acceptable plea bargain with federal prosecutors.