Description /

Iván Argote and Floating Museum, DIGNIDAD, 2026, wood, cement, fiber mesh, pigment, flatbed truck

DIGNIDAD was developed by Floating Museum in collaboration with artist Iván Argote and curator Carla Acevedo-Yates. As the fourth installment in the Floating Monuments series, the project continues an exploration of how monuments can function beyond fixed, commemorative objects—reimagining them as forms that move through the city, pointing to erased or suppressed histories, and engaging public life in real time.

Composed of concrete letters spelling the word “DIGNIDAD,” the work exists simultaneously as sculpture, language, and social proposition. Mounted on a flatbed truck, it moves through the city as both object and message, a monument that does not stay still long enough to become invisible.

The project launches in Humboldt Park, a neighborhood with deep cultural and historical  significance for Chicago’s Puerto Rican community, and emerges from a multi-year dialogue and creative process. The community stabilized in its current location after persevering through a 1950s urban renewal campaign that displaced over 900 families from their homes in “La Clark” on Chicago’s north side. Broader political struggles—including oppressive laws like La Ley de la Mordaza, which prohibited the display of the Puerto Rican flag, even within one’s own home, also shape the historical context surrounding the project.

Shaped by histories of resistance, resilience, and transcultural solidarity, the work responds to conditions that continue to affect migrant and Latine communities. Beginning as a participant in the Puerto Rican People's Day Parade before traveling to additional sites across the city, the sculpture carries these histories and conversations through visibility and collective encounter.

The word “dignidad” functions as both language and form. Its use of Spanish is intentional, reflecting the presence of communities whose language, labor, and culture continue to shape the city. In this sense, the work approaches concrete poetry: meaning carried not only through language, but through form, scale, material, and movement. Here, the word itself becomes material—moving through public space as something physical and shared.

DIGNIDAD brings together Argote’s longstanding engagement with public space and Floating Museum’s ongoing exploration of the monument as a mobile and participatory form. Developed collaboratively with Carla Acevedo-Yates through the Floating Monuments series, the project extends these shared interests through sculpture and collective participation—creating a monument that remains visible through circulation, and public life.

Click here to read the full Program Annoucement.

Click here to read the full Press Release.


Lead Artist /

Iván Argote is a Colombian artist and film director whose work engages critically with the structures that shape collective memory, belief systems, and power. Through sculpture, installation, film, performance, and public interventions, he examines how individuals relate to one another and to institutions, often questioning established historical narratives and the symbols that sustain them. His practice is grounded in strategies of tenderness, affect, and humor, which he uses to destabilize authority and propose alternative ways of understanding history and belonging.

A central element of Iván Argote’s practice is his engagement with monuments and large-scale public installations. By reinterpreting these traditional symbols of power, he proposes alternative meanings and symbolic uses, prompting viewers to question the ideological structures embedded in public spaces. His works generate moments of reflection, disruption, and emotional resonance, fostering more inclusive and decentralized narratives. Among his notable public projects is Dinosaur on the High Line in New York, presented from October 2024 to Spring 2026.

Argote’s work is held in prominent collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou, ASU Art Museum, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Banco de la República Art Collection in Bogotá, Kadist in San Francisco, and the MACBA. Through this diverse body of work, Iván Argote continues to challenge dominant perspectives and expand the role of art as a space for critical reflection and social transformation.

︎ivanargote.com


Curator /

Carla Acevedo-Yates is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Chicago. She is on the artistic team for documenta16 in Kassel, Germany. Her recent exhibitions, publications, and lectures have focused on diaspora as a site of cultural production that reimagines social and political life.

She has curated over thirty exhibitions, including solo presentations on the work of Carolina Caycedo, David Lamelas, Johanna Unzueta, Claudia Peña Salinas, Duane Linklater, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. She is the former Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives at the MCA Chicago, where she curated the group exhibitions Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón, now on view at the MCA Chicago and traveling to the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2027, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today, which traveled to ICA Boston and MCA San Diego, as well as entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico. In 2015, she was awarded a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for an article on Zilia Sánchez. She is the inaugural recipient of the CCS Bard Alumni Award, which recognizes an outstanding graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies for sustained innovation and engagement in exhibition-making, public education, research, and a commitment to the field.



DIGNIDAD is a collaboration with Iván Argote and Carla Acevedo-Yates and was made possible by generous support from the Mellon Foundation.