Karyn Olivier’s The Battle Is Joined is a mirrored remix of the Battle of Germantown Memorial, a 20-foot-high commemorative structure dedicated to a Revolutionary War skirmish between American and British troops in 1777. Olivier built out a temporary acrylic mirror to encase the monument as a way to bring people closer to one another, their surroundings, and their living histories. As Olivier states, “It will transport, transmit, express and literally reflect the landscape, people and activities that surround it. We will be reminded that this memorial can be an instrument and we, too, are instruments—the keepers and protectors of the monument, and in that role, sometimes we become the very monument itself.” The original Battle of Germantown Memorial was dedicated in 1903, and includes an engraved map of the battleground in colonial Germantown. In her updated version, Olivier engages the neighborhood’s rich public history as a platform for understanding inherited symbols from the past and envisioning new modes of reflection, interpretation, and meaning making.

This project was created for Monument Lab: A Public Art and History Project curated by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum and produced by Mural Arts Philadelphia. Monument Lab was premised on central guiding question: What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? From September 16 to November 19, 2017, temporary prototype monuments by 20 artists were installed across 10 sites in Philadelphia’s iconic public squares and neighborhood parks. These site-specific artworks were presented together with research labs housed in shipping containers, where proposals for new monuments were collected from community members. The proposals—more than 5,000 in total—became a dataset of public speculation presented in a final report the city. During the exhibition, the collection was on view at the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.