No Monument: Creating a Sensory Tour of Our Everyday Built Environment

A workshop with designer Yeju Choi co-organized by the ICA and the VCUarts Department of Graphic Design as part of the Objects + Methods lecture series.

In this workshop, we will collectively create a unique, self-guided tour of the public space around the ICA. Rather than highlight stops such as monuments (or their downfall) typically found in walking tours of Richmond, we will explore what the opposite of a monument may be by shifting our focus to subjective, sensory, and lived experiences of our everyday surroundings.

Free from any preconceptions about the location’s historical or cultural significance, participants will first experience their surroundings anew using all their senses. They will then identify a spot and develop a set of instructions for how others should experience it. Together we will ask: What catches our attention? What do we want others to notice, to listen to, smell, touch?

This workshop invites participants to remember a time when they fully engaged with the physical world around them, unmediated—playing, acting on random impulses, making up games, and actively finding joy in the mundane. The outcome will be a series of site-specific urban interventions that transform how we interact with our environment, without building anything new.

About the Artist
Yeju Choi is a designer, artist, and educator based in New York City. She designs books, visual identity systems, websites, and environmental graphics for civic, public, and cultural projects. She also creates site-specific, community-based, and socially engaged public art projects as Yeju & Chat, a collaborative practice with Chat Travieso. Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Yeju received a BFA from Seoul National University and an MFA from Yale University, where she was awarded the Norman Joondeph Prize and the Phelps Berdan Award. Yeju has taught at Yale School of Art since 2012.