Najja Moon: Your Mommas Voice in the Back of Your Head

By Ashley Knight

Miami-based artist Najja Moon’s public sculpture entitled Your Mommas Voice in the Back of Your Head has been on view at Collins Park since March 18, 2021.

Building upon the question of what our monuments represent, this piece isthe first work in the New Monuments series initiated by The Bass. Following Moon, this initiative will select five local artists over the next five years from an open call. Each artist will probe the idea of a monument to provide varying answers with a work of art that will be on view in Collins Park for approximately 10-12 months each.

Speaking to the deeply personal yet universal relationship between mothers and children, Your Mommas Voice in the Back of Your Head configures multidirectional speakers encased in gradient dichroic glass, echoing mantras, scolds and colloquialisms voiced by Moon’s own mother, as well as those from her friends and family. Through recording sessions open to the public, Moon has also gathered the voices of mothers resident to Miami-Dade County in English, Spanish and Creole.

Installation view of Najja Moon: Your Mommas Voice in the Back of Your Head. Photography by Zaire Kacz. Image courtesy of The Bass, Miami Beach.

“Your mother is a monument. A constant reminder. A well of advice. An angel on your shoulder with a lot of attitude,” explains Moon. “For this piece I want to recreate that sound bath that is your mommas voice in the back of your head. That voice is empowering, challenging and even confusing until ‘you’ll understand when you have children.’ Voices bouncing from different directions just like the light, will hone in on the tough love, as well as the blind faith we receive, digest and give.”

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Najja Moon is a Miami based artist and cultural practitioner, born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. Her practice is an amalgamation of practicalities that improve her life: design and language, cultural responsibility and community. In her visual arts practice, she uses drawing and text to explore the intersections of queer identity, the body and movement, black culture and familiar relations both personal and communal.

Her most recent exhibitions included: “Time Sensitive,” 2020, Spinello Projects (Miami); “Dust Specks on the Sea,” 2020, Little Haiti Cultural Center (Miami); “Grounded,” 2019, Spinello Projects (Miami); “SPRTS Issue 9,” 2019, Endless Editions, NYABF @MoMA PS1 (New York); “How to Patch a Leaky Roof,” 2019, Commissioned by O, Miami (Miami); “2 & a possible,” 2019, Supplement Projects xArts.Black (Miami); “Project Art: Currents,” 2019, Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami); “Paradise Summit Miami,” 2018, Emerson Dorsch Gallery (Miami).

In 2015, she co-founded the BLCK family, a Miami based creative collective responsible for the installation of mobile performance art shows centered around culinary, visual, performing and social arts. She co-founded the former queer social club for womxn, This Girls lunchbox(2017-2019), that centered art as a convening point.

The Bass is situated in Collins Park, a public park of Miami Beach, where there are presently four monuments commissioned by different groups at various times. Sitting atop stone plinths in the south side of the park, these existing monuments pay homage to Cuban epidemiologist Dr. Carlos Finlay, Venezuelan political leader Simón Bolívar, Nicaraguan scientist Dr. Luis Henry Debayle and Cuban writer Jose Martí. Amid an international debate on monuments and their legitimacy, New Monuments seeks to provide artists in Miami-Dade County the opportunity to produce a new, fifth monument and to reimagine the future of public installations and memorials.

The Bass Museum of Art is located at 2100 Collins Avenue. Miami Beach, FL 33139. On view through January 2022.