This June marks the fifty-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic Loving v. Virginia ruling, in which a white man and a non-white woman* fought the state’s Racial Integrity Act for the right to marry one another. (Kenyan actress Ruth Negga scored a breakthrough this year with her Oscar-nominated turn as Mildred Loving.) In Loving Memory is a joint installation made by James Ari Montford and Denyse Marie Wilhelm. The centerpiece is a minute-long radio drama for three – boyfriend, girlfriend, angry father – and the action unfolds around a sparsely decorated dining room table, a distorted mirror reflecting the missing trio of participants.
* Despite common assumptions, Mildred Loving self-identified as a Rappahannock Indian. “I have no black ancestry,” she told an interviewer in 2004. This subject came up again when the movie was released in November.