Following protests and repeated vandalism of a Christopher Columbus statue in 2020, the city of Providence removed it from its pedestal in the Elmwood neighborhood. In 2023, the statue was gifted to the city of Johnston, Rhode Island, where it became a symbol of reactionary culture. Where local residents of Elmwood responded to the statue by criticizing the violent history it embodies, the statue in Johnston elicited white nationalist recruitment of residents. The responses of the two locations raise important questions, namely: Who can politicize Columbus? And to what ends? An Empty Pedestal is an Invitation politicizes the local history between the two locations and reframes the pedestal where Columbus once stood as an invitation to imagine otherwise.