Jillian McManemin is a writer, artist, and contributing editor at BOMB Magazine.

Her first book, Sculpture Kills, is auto-theory that surveys fatal contemporary art—sculptures that slay and performances that murder. With examples including Christo and Richard Serra, Sculpture Kills delves into the critical implications of lethal and unstable artworks, in an examination of life, death, and art. Publication details TBA.

She has published writing with Ursula, Hyperallergic, The Broadcast, The Brooklyn Rail, Texte Zur Kunst and other publications. Her chapbook, No Horses Were Harmed in the Making of this Work was published by Belladonna Collaborative in 2023.

She reissued Representing Lesbian Subjectivities (1994) with ARTPAPERS in 2023, on the lesbian community of the 90s, a stark reminder that we are dealing with the same inequities as we were thirty years ago.

In 2020, McManemin founded the Toppled Monuments Archive (TMA), an international digital archive for recorded defaced and toppled monuments. TMA is a map, digital publication platform, and radical interactional collective that came together to create an accessible, open-source online platform of recorded, toppled, defaced, contested, and removed monuments. The archive pushes back against traditional preservation conventions to center the event, the people, and the acts of revolution ––offering alternative narratives on how to preserve history. TMA curated and facilitated public workshops, lectures, publications, exhibitions and led weekly town hall meetings, actively creating a conscious space for social justice, research, and community; with people participating from all over the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, China, Egypt, Germany, and other locations.

She read her work at the Whitney Museum as part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial: As Quiet as It’s Kept. She has presented multimedia and performance work at Anthology Film Archives, The MET Live Arts, The Poetry Project, Dixon Place, The Slipper Room, The Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, Circe Theater, Invisible Exports, and the Knockdown Center.

She starred in the arthouse feature The Cruel Tale of the Medicine Man (2016), and co-starred and co-directed Confederitis (2018) with her collaborator, Rbt. Sps. Her work has received press in The Smithsonian Magazine, Bloomberg Magazine, The New York Times, Art21, and Hyperallergic and has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Georgian, and German. In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Creative Capital Award. She’s been a writer in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Can Serrat, and Shandenkan: Governors Island.

Her professional experiences have focused on archives, digital archives, art studio management, and working at multiple capacities with independent presses. Notable experience and collaborations include: The Estate of David Smith, The Feminist Institute, Google Arts and Culture, Judith Bernstein Studio, Hauser & Wirth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Saul Ostrow’s press CPInprint.

Email: studio@jillianmcmanemin.com

TMA: toppledmonumentsarchive@gmail.com