‘Right Beyond the Site’: Otabenga Jones & the Social Practice of Belonging

Third Ward, one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in Houston,  Texas, is known for its residential demography, its political  noncompliance, and its culture of arts. A onetime muse for John Biggers,  and the home of Project Row Houses, Third Ward has become a hub for  Black artists. In this essay, I highlight the politicized aesthetic  praxis and Otabenga Jones & Associates, a collective formed in 2000.  Informed by their 2014 performance, “Monuments: Right Beyond the Site,”  I suggest these artists, by assuming a community-centered Black sense  of place, used their art to illustrate alternative forms of development  for this segment of Third Ward. By revealing the use value of public and  private spaces, Otabenga Jones & Associates challenged the  individualizing spatial formations that override the development  traditions of long standing residents.