In the fall of 2003, two undergraduate students embarked upon an ambitious project: on a campus dominated by art and sculpture that glorifies primarily white, male figures, Sumona Das Gupta and Jaebadiah Gardner sought to create a lasting monument to diversity. 

Das Gupta and Gardner worked tirelessly to turn their idea into a reality. They contacted dozens of campus departments to secure a budget of $50,000, and convinced UW Professor John Young to take on a studio course in which a team of art students and interested non-majors collaborated to design and construct the monument. The resulting structure was completed in 2005, and stands before you today. 

Blocked Out is dedicated ‘to those who are excluded from the house they were exploited to create’. The art installation combines several elements to tell its story: the empty pedestal, which is marked only by a pair of footprints, represents a Filipino boy sold into slavery at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a world’s fair held on the University of Washington campus in 1909. The block is ‘a base without a statue, for all those whose lives have gone uncommemorated’. From the block, ripples in the earth represent the sound waves of unheard voices, approaching - but not quite reaching - the ear beyond them.