Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Design
"Breath, Form, and Freedom," original design by Patricia Nguyen and John Lee
In 2017, CTJM commissioned selected Chicago-based artists of color to create a proposal for the permanent, public memorial promised by the Reparations Ordinance. To prepare the artists for the commission, CTJM members organized for almost a year to create a Call for Proposals that included ideas from survivors and family members about what the Memorial should look like and what kind of story it should tell.
As commissions were underway, CTJM hired Hanna Jasper to curate an exhibition of proposals for the memorial. The exhibition, “Still Here: Torture, Resiliency, and the Art of Memorializing,” opened on March 15, 2019, at Arts + Public Life’s Arts Incubator Gallery. The exhibition, like the many CTJM exhibitions before, served to educate the community about the legacy of police torture in Chicago, to be a platform for survivors to tell their stories, and to imagine what repair and justice could look like. Throughout the exhibition, survivors were docents for the show, and CTJM held screenings, poetry readings, and a community discussion to get input on the Memorial and its meaning for the Southside community. This exhibition was an important tool to select a final memorial proposal and to honor the activists, organizers and families who have worked for decades to bring the torture to light.
The chosen memorial design (pictured at the top of page) was submitted by artist Patricia Nguyen and architectural designer John Lee, who produced a model memorial that examines the historical remnants of police torture and offers reparative space for communities to heal. The original memorial design measured 1600 square feet, with a winding hallway featuring the names and dates of Burge torture survivors. The open ceiling boasts a 16-foot high threshold providing ample natural light and a sky view. Intended to be constructed in a park setting, the memorial design provided a natural extension into public space giving its visitors a more natural and fluid experience.
The following statement was submitted by Patricia Nguyen and John Lee in response to being selected as the winning design for the future Chicago Torture Justice Memorial:
We are deeply humbled with the great honor of building the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial to center the stories of survivors, archive the struggle for reparations, and create a community space in the continued fight for justice. We would like to send our heartfelt gratitude to the survivors, Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project (CTJM) members, Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC), the Arts Incubator staff and curator, Hannah Jasper, and all organizers and collectives involved in this larger struggle for freedom. Words alone cannot describe how meaningful it was to be involved in exhibiting our proposal alongside such phenomenal artists and designers in Chicago who each have created incredibly thoughtful and powerful work.
As artists, we ask ourselves, “What is our role as cultural producers in the face of continued war, police brutality, mass incarceration, and poverty in our nation’s history?” For us, connecting the history of slavery, international wars, and domestic policies that criminalize poor and working-class communities of color to resilient transnational struggles for liberation was a critical point of departure in defining what this memorial can offer as a public archive and educational platform for all generations. We envisioned a monumental anti-monument, where time does not stand still within the memorial to commemorate a history as past, but a past that is still present and its scale as undeniable. We hope to honor the survivors, both those who have come out and those who are unknown with this memorial and affirm that they are, in the words of Anthony Holmes, “still here.”
*Special thanks to survivors and freedom fighters, Mark Clements and Anthony Holmes, who were a critical part of the in the studio visits with artists and conversations with CTJM.
Since Nguyen and Lee’s memorial design was selected in 2019, it has gone through several rounds of re-design, including design retreats with survivors, regular design committee meetings, and work with architectural and landscaping teams. The process has prioritized accessibility, sustainability, and staying true to the values and visions of survivors. The design values and elements identified in interviews with survivors and CTJM members include:
Grounded in survivors' hopes and designs for the memorial
Survivors' names displayed and a contemplative/meditative learning space to honor their memory
Community-based design process including neighbors of the Memorial site
Content to be shaped by survivors and CTJM
Communal space for healing and activism
To be activated by survivors, community members, CTJM, and youth
In 2025, CTJMF began working with architect John Gay of JAQ Corp to refine and finalize the memorial design. At the start of his work with the memorial, Gay and his team spoke extensively with survivors to assure their continued engagement with the memorial design process.