Abigail DeVille

La Loge Harlem

The work La Loge Harlem focuses on the history of Harlem and its development over the last 200 years. It was a playground for the rich in the 19th century and where Old New York had its summer homes and diversions. The center image is a portrait of the artist’s grandmother when she was 16 in 1949. She and her mother were a part of the Great Migration moving to Harlem in 1943 from Richmond, VA. The glass and images are in reference to racist policing policies and a theory called Broken Windows that started in the early 1980s and is still implemented by the NYPD today. In practice, Broken Windows has come to be synonymous with misdemeanor arrests and summonses. In New York, the largest city to implement the practice, between 2010 and 2015, police issued 1.8 million quality of life summonses for offenses like disorderly conduct, public urination, and drinking or possessing small amounts of marijuana.