Counterpublic is a triennial public art exhibition scaled to a neighbourhood organised by The Luminary. Bringing groundbreaking contemporary art to barbershops, bakeries, parks, and taquerias that anchor Cherokee Street and the surrounding neighbourhoods of South St. Louis, the events act as gathering spaces for the many communities living in the area.
The project centers on a series of thirty-plus site-responsive commissions in venues as divergent as a tea shop, punk club, former sanctuary, Buddhist temple, Mexican panaderia, and community-organised park and basketball court.
Works range from architectural interventions to archival community-led sessions, meal-based gatherings to dramatic public processions. Spanning three months, the project is meant to be a layered, nuanced neighbourhood-based platform that engages the complex community organising, conflicted politics, radical openings, and distressing developments that intertwine within Cherokee Street and its surroundings. Together, Counterpublic intends to advance new contexts of liberation, care, complexity, and dissent into the everyday spaces of a neighbourhood through responsive commissions and intentional intersections among the many publics and counterpublics of this place.
COUNTERSPACE 