- Good evening.

I'm Sheri Castelnuovo,
the Curator of Education,

and on behalf of MMoCA's
staff and board of trustees,

it's my pleasure to welcome you

to the Steven
Fleischmann Lectureship,

featuring Sonya Clark.

The lectureship honors
the 25th anniversary

of Steven Fleischmann's
tenure as Museum Director.

Members of MMoCA's
Board of Trustees

who served during that time,

funded an endowment to
provide for an annual lecture

by individuals who have made
exceptional contributions

to art and culture.

Talks organized
for the lectureship

are held each year in April,
and have free admission,

in recognition of the
museum's dedication

to providing access
to opportunities

for learning and enrichment.

We're very fortunate to have,

as our distinguished
guest, Sonya Clark.

Originally from Washington D.C.,

and now residing in
Amherst, Massachusetts,

Sonya Clark is
internationally celebrated for

conceptually sophisticated,
finely crafted work,

that builds upon
familiar objects:

a comb, beads, a
dollar bill, a flag.

As she has said,
"Objects have personal

"and cultural meaning, because
they absorb our stories,

and reflect our
humanity back to us."

Prior to her current appointment

a Professor of Art
at Amherst College,

Sonya was a distinguished
research fellow

in the School of the Arts,

at Virginia
Commonwealth University

where from 2006 into 2017,

she served as chair

for the Craft Material
Studies Department.

She also was a Baldwin Baskin
Professor of Creative Arts

at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison

from 2004 to 2006,

and was on the Design
Studies faculty

in the School of Human
Ecology from 1997 to 2005.

Among the honors
she has received

are the 2016 Virginia
Commonwealth University's

Distinguished Scholars Award,

an honorary doctorate of arts
from Amherst College in 2015,

and a Distinguished Alumni Award

from Cranbrook Academy
of Art in 2011.

She is the recipient
of a United States

Artist's Fellowship, a
Pollock Krasner Award,

and an Anonymous Was A
Woman Award among others,

and has held residencies
in China, France,

Italy, and the United States.

Her work has been
exhibited in over 350

museums and galleries
in the Americas,

Africa, Asia, Europe,
and Australia,

and appears in major
public collections,

including the Indianapolis
Museum of Art,

the Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts in Quebec,

the Museum of Fine Arts Boston,

and the Virginia Museum
of Fine Arts Richmond.

Sonya also holds a
special place in MMoCA's

institutional history.

She served on the
museum's board of trustees

from 2000 to 2003,

and five of her sculptures
from the wig series,

are included in MMoCA's
permanent collection.

These works reimagine the
Fibonacci mathematical series

through the rituals and
traditions of African

and African American
hairstyling,

and embody Sonya's exploration
of race and identity

through the interplay
of material and process.

So it's with great pleasure

that we welcome Sonya
Clark back to MMoCA.

Please offer her a warm welcome.

(audience applauds)

- Thank you Sheri.

(audience applauds)

Hi, good evening.

It's so lovely to be here

and to see so many
familiar faces,

so thank you for coming out.

It's always nice to have a
little bit of a homecoming.

This evening I'm going to
be jumping all over the map,

in terms of, there won't
be any linear trajection.

So, and there are no
dates on the work,

so you'll just have
to follow along.

(audience laughs)

So I want to start
by sharing with you

this image,

and this quote, or this thought.

So James Baldwin referred to art

as a kind of a confession.

And so actually what
I'm going to be doing

in the next 45, 50 minutes
is confessing to you.

He describes art as
a way of examining

and facing one's life,

so you can determine how you
are connected to others' lives,

and then iteratively,
those others can discover

the terms by which
they too are connected

to yet another group of people,

and so on, and so on.

So kind of everything
you need to know about me

is in this picture.

This awesome woman
was my grandmother.

She is rocking a
beautiful white Afro,

which I am waiting to grow.

(audience laughs)

The Afro I have, the
white, I don't have that.

And she was an
itinerant grandmother.

She visited her children
in these places,

and I want you to
think about this.

So she's from Jamaica,

and she visited her
children and grandchildren

in the United States of America,

in Ghana, in the U.K.,

and of course in Jamaica,

all sites of the transatlantic
slave trade route.

So in my very family, first
generation my cousins,

you see resonance from that

terrible part of our history.

The other thing that
you see is that,

first of all she would hate

that I'm showing
you this photograph,

but she's been an
ancestor for a long time,

so she doesn't get to choose.

(audience laughs)

Because she was actually
quite an elegant woman,

and here she's, you
know, in her overalls

and stitching at a
Singer sewing machine.

And that stitching at
a Singer sewing machine

is the other thing that
you need to know about me.

So my grandmother when
she would visit with us,

she would say,
"Come stitch with me

"and I'll tell you stories.

"Come tell me your stories,

and we'll put it in a stitch."

She breathed her
stories into me,

and so this way of
like, hair stories,

and textiles infused
with cultural pride
and social justice,

is why I'm here with you today.

Now Chummy's last child that
joined her as an ancestor

was Lilith Clark.

Lilith Clark was my mother
who became an ancestor

on August 27th of last year.

And the thing about
my mother is that

she thought it was very strange

that she had this daughter
who made work with hair,

'cause you're really
not supposed to

mess with your ancestors
in that way, right?

You know, and your
hair is your DNA,

and your DNA your
ancestors, right?

So she was a little
like, "I'm not sure about

this work you're makin'
with our people."

But she conceded,

where she would save her hair

every time that she
would brush her hair,

she would save it in
a little Ziploc bag

and she would give it to me.

And her hair was
really salt and pepper.

So this piece
that you're seeing here

is my studio assistant and I

separating her dark hair
from her white hair.

(audience laughs)

Which takes a long time,

'cause you have to have
a white sheet of paper

and a dark sheet of paper,
almost like the slide,

so you could see where
the white hair is.

This I'm going to also
confess while I'm just in the

realm of confessing,
that my studio manager

is much better than I am,

because she would take a
hair and cut it in half,

if it was half black
and half white,

(audience laughs)

and my quality control
is not at that level.

(audience laughs)

But the piece is called Mom's
Wisdom or Cotton Candy ,

because I felt like I was
preserving her wisdom,

that is to say her white hair.

But also the reference
to cotton candy,

both being that the
sugar cane fields

of her homeland Jamaica, and
the sweetness of her wisdom

tucked into her aging
and fleeting memory.

Now I grew up in
Washington D.C.,

my parents migrated there,

my mother from Jamaica,
my father from Trinidad,

and we lived across
the street of the,

from this grand home,

and in that home
lived a family of 14.

It was a home of
Ambassador Ajibade,

Ambassador Ajibade was
from what is now Benin,

in the West African
nation of Benin,

and when we, when my sister
and I would go over there,

we would get our hair done

in these magnificent hairstyles,

and so from a young age

I knew that I was walking
with art on my head

because people would stop me

and they would tell me
how beautiful I was,

but really only when I had

one of these
phenomenal hairstyles.

(audience laughs)

So I realized it
might not be me,

like I'd grown the
material for the art,

but the art was from
the hands of these

cool teenagers who
were sort of like

young aunties for us,

who would do all these
magnificent things

on our hair.

The Ajibade are Yoruba people,

and the Yoruba believed
that the seat of the soul

is actually in one's head,

so in that sense,
hairdressing is not like a

issue of vanity, but really
an issue of ritual practice.

So the pieces that are
just outside in the gallery

are my attempt
to try and remember

those fleeting hairstyles,

remember the art that
once lived on my head.

And I should also
share with you that

when I was an
undergraduate student,

I went to a lecture

at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst.

At the time I was a
student at Amherst College

where I currently teach,

and so we knew that
the great Jimmy Baldwin

was coming to give a lecture.

And years later,

actually when I was a
faculty member here,

I found this old notebook,

and in that notebook I found
a quote from James Baldwin,

and it was the only quote,

in fact it was the only
text that was on the paper,

because the rest
of it was doodles,

and I didn't actually
think of myself as

being an artist at the time.

I was studying
psychology at the time,

but his quote was, "We
must find our lost crowns

and wear them."

And so many years later,
I find myself here

at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison,

befriending one of the top
African arts historians,

Henry Drewal, and
discussing Yoruba culture,

and making this work.

So fast forward to
like 2013 or 14,

and this idea of thinking
about hair and textiles.

What's the connection
between the two of them?

And I would say that one
of the things that I think

is the connection is that
hairdressing is, perhaps,

the first textile art form.

Now that's something
that a friend of mine,

Bill Gaskins, who's a
professor at Cornell

once said about my work
when he was critiquing,

writing a review of a show
that I had with those wigs,

the wig series.

And I thought, "Oh
that's beautiful."

Hairdressing as a
primordial textile art form.

Now that must have been
back in the late 90s

that he wrote that, and
in about 2013 or so,

I decided to put that
supposition to work.

So I gave hairdressers
my head of hair,

and I also gave
them these canvases

that were stitched
with silk thread,

that you see on the
right-hand side of the slide,

and I said, if there is
language between hairdressing

and textile arts,

then if I go to the fluent
speakers of hairdressing,

then we'll see how
fluent they are

in the language of textiles.

And the Hair Craft
Project was born.

I wanted to amplify the
voices of hairdressers.

You know there's,

the word plait is
related to the word plex,

as in complex and
having many parts,

and this project
itself had many parts.

It was first shown at a
gallery in Richmond, Virginia

where I lived at the time,
situated in Old Downtown

which had become
a new arts district,

and the old black
salons and barbers

were still hanging on.

The gentrification
was happening.

So in this place of art,

I decided to bring this nexus

of these two communities.

Unfortunately, art
community in Richmond,

skewed European American,

and certainly the hairdressers

that I was working with were
in African American salons,

so they were bringing
their clients to the show,

people from the art community

were bringing
friends to the show.

I belong to both of
these communities,

and people were asked to choose

which canvases and
the photographs

from the hairstyles
that I was given,

which ones they
thought were best.

And then we had two jurors,

A'Lelia Bundles who was
a great granddaughter

of Madame C.J. Walker,

who is famously known for
being one of the first

self-made women millionaires.

She also happened to
be African American.

She made her millions
before she died,

made her million before
she died in 1919,

so quite a while
ago, 100 years ago.

And then the other.

And A'Lelia Bundles had also
written an autobiography,

not an autobiography,
but a biography

of her great-grandmother.

So she came, and she
juried what she thought

were the best hairstyles as
depicted in the photographs.

And then Lowery Sims
who was a chief curator

of the Museum of Arts and
Design in New York City

at that time, juried
what she thought

were the best canvases.

And the popular vote and
the jury's vote lined up.

Just to give you
a sense of the show

when it went to Art Prize,

and then it won Art Prize,

which surprised everybody

and made all of the hairdressers
very happy.

(audience laughs)

Because I was writing checks.

Of course they all got
paid for participating

in the show in the first place,

and then they got paid again,

and then the whole project

was purchased by
the MFA in Boston,

the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston,

and then they got paid
again (audience laughs),

and then they started saying,

"I should give up hairdressing,"

and I said "Don't you do that!"

(audience laughs)

I said "Let me show you
into my art collection.

I am the biggest
collector of it."

(audience laughs)

And you know, I reminded them

that they work on a
commissioned art form.

When someone, when
they do your hair,

you pay them, that's it.

Next, next head, next art.

Next exchange.

This is a sort of phenomenal
work

that was done on my head.

I apologize to you all right now

that I have such boring hair.

(audience laughs)

I no longer live in
Richmond, Virginia

where I get myself in trouble,

'cause I come to town
and people get jealous

as to whose chair
I'm going to sit in.

But this is Jamila
Williams' work,

and you can see,
there's no doubt

that this is a
master craftsperson,

and that the fluency
between textiles

and hairdressing is clear.

Now this idea of using
thread in the place of hair,

is something that you saw in
those early works in wigs,

in the wig series,
that was cotton thread,

but also in works like this
Ro

oted and Uprooted .

This idea of the visceral
pull of heritage,

the sort of West African
concept of knowing one's roots

which is rooted
in this ability of

whether you can name
someone in your family

or trace your lineage
back 10 generations.

So I wonder how many of you
feel like you could do that,

like you could name your,

certain your own generation,
that's your name,

and then you know, your
parents and your grandparents,

and your great grands, and
your great great grands,

and how far back can you go?

So the ironic thing
is that in my lineage,

I can go back about
now, 11 generations

on the far less evident
side of my heritage,

that is to say my
great-grandfather's
side of my family

as my great-grandfather
was Scottish.

He came from the
Highlands of Scotland,

so way back there in the
Highlands of Scotland,

knowing my people in the
tartan and everything.

But you know, I don't
identify as a European person,

so the African part
of my heritage,

it has been uprooted.

So I moved to
Richmond, Virginia.

Seat of the Confederacy,
(man laughs)

and I lived there for 12 years,

and if someone had
told this black girl

who grew up in D.C.
that I was going to move

to Richmond,
Virginia and like it,

I would have lost that bet,

but I really did like living
in Richmond, Virginia.

However, I did not
like when the governor,

in 2010, Bob McDonnell,
decided to proclaim

April as Confederate
History Month

without any acknowledgment
to the contributions

of African peoples,

people of African descent

to the wealth of this nation,

the wealth of Richmond,

the wealth of Virginia,

the wealth of the South,

the wealth of this
entire nation,

and global wealth.

Nor did he make any
acknowledgment of
the native peoples

and the mass genocide.

So I was a little
pissy about that.

(audience laughs)

But pissiness can
lead to decent art,

so I made this piece,

(audience laughs)

in which I took a
Confederate battle flag,

actually I hand-painted this
Confederate battle flag,

stitched through it
with that same technique

of thread through canvas,

and then using
hairstyling techniques,

very similar to
the ones on wigs,

that make up the American flag.

So you see cornrows,
and then the stars

that make up the American
flag are Bantu knots.

So the cornrows are referring to

people working the land, right?

And the Bantu knots are
referring to peoples

that have a language,
and a culture,

and a civilization,

and all of that.

Now, after making this piece,

which I should
also share with you

was in part made because
the Museum of Fine Arts

in Richmond, Virginia,
on its grounds,

was hanging a
Confederate battle flag,

and they had taken it down,

Governor Bob McDonnell
makes a proclamation,

I make this piece,
flag comes down,

and all these "heritage
not hate" people

start coming out.

"You've taken down our
flag," et cetera, et cetera.

And then I get an
invitation from

the Director of the
Museum of the Confederacy

in Richmond, which
I have to admit

I'd never been to before,

and he wanted to share with me

that I was, he
wanted to educate me

about a couple of things.

(audience chuckles)

So one of the things that he
wanted to educate me about

was that I was, in short,

calling that flag that you saw,

and that you all know so well,

the Confederate flag.

And he said, "Well that's
not the Confederate flag.

"That's the Confederate
battle flag.

"And in fact, there were several
Confederate battle flags.

"The Confederate flag is square,

"the Confederate battle
flag is rectangular,

"and here are all these other
Confederate flags as well.

"People mistakenly call
that one stars and bars.

That's not the stars and bars
one, there's another one."

On and on and on and on.

I will admit I
learned some things,

and I also got to
encounter one of the

first Confederate battle
flags, this one here,

just a portion of
it, that you can see

it was made out of silk,

as many of those flags
were at the time, or wool.

And this piece was behind,

it was in a darkened room
to protect the textile

and behind glass.

So the glass became
like a mirror,

and if you look
closely you can see

sort of the top of my head,

same shiny head there.

(audience laughs)

And so I saw myself reflected
in this tattered cloth.

So when 2015 came about,

which was 150th sesquicentennial

of the end of the Civil War,

marked by the Battle
at Appomattox,

I decided to take a purchased
Confederate battle flag

down to its threads, to
completely unravel it.

So my studio assistants and I
did that.

We went about taking
it down to its threads,

to think about how far
we had come as a nation.

If the Confederate--

If the Civil War had
been lost 150 years ago,

to the South had lost
it 150 years ago,

then how was it that in 2015,

with an African
American president,

but even with Obama in office,

we were witnessing as a nation

the atrocities of policing,
brutalizing, and murdering

of black and brown people,

with our phones on social media.

So steps ahead and
steps backwards,
right, simultaneously.

Sort of cognitive
dissonance of this nation.

And that's when I realized
that this is the end game

but we really have
a lot of work to do.

So one of the things that I did

was invite people to
join me in the process,

in tandem, me only standing
on the right side of the flag,

someone else always
joining me one at a time

in unraveling the
Confederate battle flag.

I've done several of
these performances.

They usually last
two or three hours.

I spend two or three
minutes with each person

who unravels with me.

The conversations are
deep and interesting

and sometimes troubling.

Sometimes people come to tears.

Sometimes I'm honestly,
'cause I'm confessing,

standing with a friend
who's done it before

and we're just jabbing
about, you know,

like we're having
coffee, you know,

just being about the work.

And even in two or three hours,

we get through at
most, half an inch.

(audience murmuring)

So the thing about
the Confederacy

is that it lives on with us
in this way

that it's like drinking
water or breathing air

in this nation.

I mean, I question
why we even know

one of the Confederate
battle flags so well.

I think, I suspect you
all know the answer.

It's the Ku Klux Klan.

And then I think like

what other ways has
the Confederacy sort of

gone into our every day?

So here's a confession.

I rode this rollercoaster
when I was a teenager.

And it was the rollercoaster
we all wanted to ride.

So in between D.C. and Richmond,
Virginia

was this theme park
called King's Dominion.

And at King's Dominion,

we all wanted to get on this
fabulous wooden rollercoaster,

and a group of kids
were in one car,

and another group of
kids were in another car,

and we were young enough that
no one was old enough to drive

so we're all going down,

and there was a boy
I had a crush on,

and I got my first kiss.

I associated that first kiss

with riding this rollercoaster.

(audience laughs)

This rollercoaster when
we stand in a long line

on a hot summer day,
we finally get on it,

and the person who
sort of buckles you in

says, "Okay, now scream
as loud as you can scream.

Give the rebel yell."

(audience sighs)

And so this kind of
insidiousness is something that

we have to see, contend
with, and work against,

and resist every day.

I'm assuming that all
of you, more or less,

could draw a Confederate
flag right now.

Is that true?

I mean not that you'd want to,

but you know it, right?

Like, when I showed it,
you knew what it was.

You weren't like "What
flag is that?" right?

I'm wondering if any of
you know what this is?

This is the
Confederate truce flag.

This is the piece of cloth
that ended the Civil War.

This is the piece of cloth
that we should all know,

but we don't know it, right?

We don't know it.

It's a simple,
humble, dish cloth

that was woven in
Richmond, Virginia,

and was used as a truce
or surrender flag by Lee,

at Appomattox because
it was a white cloth.

We can recognize it,

because it has these simple
three little lines, right?

Without those three
little red lines

we might not recognize it.

But it's got this humble
little design element.

It was a cloth made to
absorb things, right?

It wasn't a cloth
made to be a flag.

It was a cloth that
moved from domestic space

to the battlefield.

But it, this humble cloth,
ended the Civil War.

Now, you're only looking
at half the cloth.

This half lives
at the Smithsonian

in the American History Museum.

I didn't have to
dig deep to find it.

It was just on display,
but we don't know it.

It was next to
Lincoln's top hat.

You all know Lincoln's
top hat, right?

(audience laughs)

Why isn't this the
symbol that endured?

So it's half because in sort
of truce surrender politics

you cut the cloth in
half, and this half

actually was owned by Custer,
and then Custer's wife

gave it to the Smithsonian.

Someone in that family
gave it to the Smithsonian.

So the flag that we could say
brought the nation together

has actually been
divided in half.

So my first charge was
to acknowledge that it

should be thought
of as a monument,

and to make this piece
called Monumental Cloth

which is true-to-scale
of the dish cloth,

but to stitch the
two halves together,

and to suture them to
really think of it as

like the body of the nation.

But my most recent show,

one that just opened
a few weeks ago,

which is called, again,

Monumental Cloth: The
Flag We Should Know ,

is my push back at
what would it be like

if this really were
the symbol that endured

in our consciousness
as a nation?

So the Fabric
Workshop and Museum

who collaborated with
me on this project

went about hand
weaving many of these

true-to-scale dish cloths,

so there are 100 of
them in the exhibition.

And I also truly wanted
to make one monumental,

so this one is 15 by 30 feet,

not quite as large as
the Star Spangled Banner,

but pretty damn big.

(audience laughs)

Now you see that red
wall in the back?

So you can't read
it, but it says

Monumental Cloth: the
Flag We Should Know .

It's the title wall.

The very final hours before the,

couple days before
the show opened,

that wall was white,

and we know something
was off in the space,

so they brought me in, you know,

I'm there for the opening,

and they said,
"What should we do?"

and I said "Well, color
solves everything."

(audience chuckles)

I said let's take those
three little red stripes,

you know we've madder
dyed them so they're

true to the real color,
madder root dyed them.

Let's take a little
bit of that thread

that we used for the Monumental

and for the Many piece, and
let's go to the paint store,

and paint this wall red.

And I got a little bit of like,

"Ah, you think red'll work?"

I said "Red is the only color.

"Can't be any other color,

"'cause if it's blue then
then it's too patriotic.

"It's got to be red,
it's got to be red,

just go with the red."

So someone from the
Fabric Workshop and Museum

goes to Benjamin Moore, we
all love Benjamin Moore.

You're not going to
like them so much

at the end of this story, sorry.

(audience laughs)

Sorry, I'm just warning you.

So Alec goes to Benjamin Moore,

matching this linen that's red,

this linen thread that's
dyed in this madder root red,

and he texts us
back at the museum,

and he says, "You're not
going to believe this.

"There are three
colors that are close,

"but the perfect color
matches this red.

Guess what it's called."

(audience chatters and laughs)

And this is how this
lives on, right?

So Alec couldn't believe it.

I mean first of all,
then we had to paint

the wall this color, right?

(audience laughs)

And then we had to put this
at the base of the wall,

'cause now the wall
is part of the piece,

you know what I mean?

That's part of, right?

- [Man In Audience] Right.

- So Alec is like
"I cannot believe

"there's a Confederate red.

I just cannot believe it."

So he goes online.

So he had the paint chip

and the paint chip says
Confederate Red, this color.

He looks it up and
it's been renamed

to Patriotic Red.

Is that better?

(audience chuckles)

And back in 2014, and
you can look this up,

there's someone who
worked for Benjamin Moore

that brought a
lawsuit against them,

because he's a brown man, and
they named a color after him,

like if they named a
color Chocolate Sonya

and they didn't
talk to me about it.

(audience laughs)

Like really problematic.

And in that lawsuit,
in this article,

it says that, you know, he said,

"Just in case you all think
that I'm being sensitive,

"Benjamin Moore has
on their website

"this color called
Confederate Red,

and they refer to it as
an enduring classic."

So this is the propaganda
that we're about, right?

Like this is what lives
on in this nation,

so I really wanted
to dig at this,

so also in the show, aligning
with those three red stripes,

we did some research
to come up with

all the merchandise that
you can purchase online

that has a Confederate
battle flag.

(audience murmuring)

It is an exhaustive list.

I had to stop at 200.

I had to stop at 200.

In case you're wondering,
you can buy a yoga mat

with a Confederate
battle flag on it,

a baby onesie, bikini,

and also a dishcloth.

So I performed this
piece called Reversals ,

and this I the
only place in which

a Confederate
battle flag appears

in Monumental Cloth: The
Fl

ag You Should Know .

I am dressed in this clothing

borrowed from a
famous photograph

that I'll show you in a bit.

I am kneeling on one knee,

to conjure the idea
of Colin Kaepernick,

and I am cleaning the
floor that is dirtied

with dust gathered
from Independence Hall

and the Declaration
House in Philadelphia,

and as I clean the floor,

the Declaration of
Independence appears.

And I am cleaning the floor

with merchandise that
you can purchase online

(audience laughs)

a dishcloth or a towel,
that is printed with

the Confederate battle flag.

So this is the
image of my dress.

This dress was made
after Ella Watson,

the famous Gordon
Parks photograph

that got renamed American
Go

thic , taken in 1942.

And I wanted to
embody Ella Watson,

who has this full life
as a full human being

who is cleaning up,

and to honor all the domestic
laborers in this world,

in this nation, farm laborers,

domestics, teachers, nurses.

Many women in my family have
held those kinds of positions

and that's the other reason
that I'm here before you.

So that's about it
for that project.

There's some more pieces to it,

but just in the interest
of time, I'll move forward.

I made this piece called
Edifice and Mortar

and it's connected
to the idea of labor,

and also the idea
of empire building.

I hope you can see
that it, too, is

making reference to a flag,
perhaps an upside down flag.

The bricks, the brick
wall is 13 bricks high,

to make reference
to the 13 stripes.

The bricks are stamped
with: We hold these truths

to be self evident,
that all men are--

- [All] Created equal.

- Yes, one of the big
paradoxes of our nation.

That you know, with pursuit of

life, liberty, and
happiness (Sonya chuckles),

and yet that's not true for
all people in this nation,

so an edifice is not only a
large and imposing building,

it's also a complex
system of beliefs,

and the mortar here is made to,

gathered from the hair of
African American salons

in Richmond, 'cause
I have a lot of

salon friends in Richmond.

And the idea is that
the mortar is at once,

representing black
people that are

held under the
weight of the system,

but also are
responsible for building

the wealth of the
nation at the same time.

If you're not
familiar with this,

this is an example of an
ancient Roman brick stamp,

and I'm showing it
to you because it,

and the next slide, tie
into the back of the piece,

Edifice and Mortar .

These ancient
Roman brick stamps,

and this one is from 2 B.C.,

the outside of the crescent
would have the name of the

person who owned the clay pit.

The next inner circle would
have the name of the person

who owned the enslaved person

who was making the bricks,

and in this particular
one, COS is the name

of the enslaved person
in ancient Rome.

Now in ancient Rome
race didn't play

in the way that it
does in this nation,

or in the history
of this nation,

or certainly in the history of

the transatlantic slave trade.

But certainly slavery is
what built the Roman Empire,

and I would say
slavery is what built

the American Empire, and
yes, I called it an empire.

And it's also, Richmond
and many of our cities,

our older cities, are
brick cities as well,

and so this is, and you can
see maybe in that middle brick,

those old hand prints,
impressions left

by an enslaved African American
in the still wet bricks,

and these were people who
were forced to make bricks

for those slave quarters
that still exist

at Historic Stagville
in North Carolina.

In what was then,

the largest antebellum
plantation complex in the state.

So the back of the
piece has this.

You can see it has this
crescent shape

that is making reference to
the ancient Roman brick stamps.

And hopefully you
can also see that

it kind of looks like an Afro?

(audience murmuring)

Yeah, that part is obvious.

And then are there any
Italian speakers in the house?

Yeah, okay.

So, for the non-Italian
speakers,

if I said ciao, would
you know what that meant?

(audience murmuring)

Yeah, okay, so everybody
knows ciao, right?

So ciao is a greeting that
means hello or goodbye.

That's the way we think of it.

Ciao is directly derived
from this word schiavo,

which is an Italian word,

and would one of
the Italian speakers

like to tell us what
that word means?

- [Woman] Slave.
- Schiavo means slave.

So when we are saying
ciao to one another,

you know, 'cause we're
all so cosmopolitan,

(audience chuckles) we're
actually saying I'm your slave,

I'm in your service.

And that's that kind
of interesting slippage

that happens, you know.

Roman Empire slips
into our language,

and suddenly we're
saying ciao, right?

I'm your slave.

And just to work that through,

so you understand,
so schiavo, right?

In Venice it would be
sort of softened to shiao,

and you see how we
get to ciao from that.

Well I didn't get here
and mourn for this guy.

(audience laughs)

But it's problematic, right?

You know the great emancipator

was making an economic decision

which is why he's on a $5 bill,

and why I sell these pieces
for a lot more than $5.

(audience laughs)

It's another kind of reversal.

Just tryin' to get reparations.

(audience laughs heartily)

And also just to think as it

relates to my particular family,

this piece encrusted in which,

I grew sugar crystals
on a five dollar bill

and I hope that this piece
sort of seduces your eye

and your tongue, like
it is really rock candy.

And that is exactly
what was happening

with the slave trade
route as it relates

to the Caribbean and
to the southern parts

of the United States of America.

Places like New Orleans,

which had big sugar
plantations as well.

It was a drug of trade,

and sugar was more
valuable than the people

who worked the land.

So the seduction there.

And also this notion that
there's a way in which

Lincoln's legacy
can be sugarcoated.

Like yes, he
emancipated the slaves

or enslaved people, grateful,

it was also complicated.

So I want to share with
you this use of sugar.

This piece is called
Sugar Freed ,

and it's made from pastillage.

Pastillage is a sugar paste
popularized by Queen Victoria

in the late 1800s,

and the form of these
teeth is inspired by Nanny,

and many of you, maybe
Faizal would know this,

Nanny was the equivalent
of Sojourner Truth

but in Jamaica.

She was a African
woman who was captured,

and then she
emancipated herself,

and ran to the hills,

became part of the
Maroon Kingdom there,

and helped free other enslaved
people in the Caribbean.

Eduardo Galeano wrote
this prose poem,

"Queen of the Free" to her.

"It happens in the first
half of the 18th century.

"The international
division of labor

"decides that Jamaica exists
to sweeten Europe's table.

"The land produces sugar,
sugar, and more sugar.

"In Jamaica, as in
Brazil, diversity of diet

"is a privilege of
those who escape.

"Although fertile
land is hard to find

"in the high mountains,

"the Maroons figure out
how to grow everything,

"and even raise
pigs and chickens.

"Hidden here, they see
without being seen.

"They sting and
then they vanish.

"In the windward blue mountains

"Nanny has her temple
and her throne.

"She is queen of the free.

"Once a machine for
birthing slaves,

"now she wears necklaces

made of the teeth of
English soldiers."

I worked with one of
my hairdressing friends

who was cutting off
the dreadlocks of
one of her clients.

And I said, if you have
anybody who decides to

cut off their dreadlocks,

and they don't have any
problem with their dreadlocks

then going to an artist
who might put the piece

into the art
market, all of that,

then please let me know.

And so she did this.

She cut off some clients'
dreadlocks and gave them to me

and so I had all
these dreadlocks,

and I put them
dreadlock to dreadlock

so that it made
this long length,

and it didn't measure
anything meaningful to me.

And I kept trying to figure out

what to do with
that measurement.

And so eventually I just
turned it into this skein,

this ball of yarn,

and I thought,
well, does the size

of the ball of
yarn mean anything?

No, no.

'Cause I wanted to
assign something

that had meaning to
all of these hairs,

to the length of it.

And then I just went
to something that
I know about hair.

If you grow hair like I do,

then you probably have
about 80,000 follicles

on your scalp.

Eighty thousand.

So if you cut off
all your dreadlocks

that's like 80,000
follicles, you know,

and some more hairs of course

that are comprised
in this piece.

80,000 was a meaningful
number to me,

because 80,000 is the
number of unknown,

well, the number of people that,

in the height of slavery,

were forcibly
migrated in one year.

So how big is UW-Madison?

(audience members
murmur and answer)

40,000.

- [Man In Audience] 44.

- 44,000, so take all the
students at UW-Madison,

double that, all
of those people,

subjected to
transatlantic slavery.

Put into slavery by Africans,

taken by Europeans,
subjected to slavery

all over the world.

So I'm often thinking about race

and race designation,
because it's a construct.

We know this.

And this sort of,

let me explain to you
how much I think about it

as being a construct.

So, remember before
when I told you

that my great-grandfather
is Scottish?

Right, but I bet none of
you when I'm standing here

are thinking, yes, it's a
nice Scottish lass, right?

I mean it's just not
really how we do it

in the US right?

And yet I think about the
notion of passing, right,

and even though the
complications within that notion

that people would accuse

an African American
person of passing.

Now in order for
someone to pass,

they would have
to understandably

have European heritage, right?

So the notion of passing is
based on white supremacy, right?

Because if I stood
before you right now,

and I said to you,
I'm a Scottish person

passing for black
(audience laughs)

it makes you laugh, right?

But the reverse is something

that we would do all the time.

That there would
be a person who has

7/8 European heritage
and 1/8 African heritage

if you could draw the
lines that neatly,

and say that person's
passing for white.

And this piece No Passing ,

which also refers to drawing
borders around places,

and the complications therein.

So, both of those pieces
were made with combs,

because combs are one
of the ways that we,

you know, straightened,
combs are intended

for straight hair,
these kinds of combs.

Madame C.J. Walker, who I
was telling you about before.

She is often credited
with creating

the hair straightening
comb, the hot comb,

but she did not.

Some Parisian people
did that way before,

but she did make a
bunch of products

that helped African American
women straighten their hair.

And so I wanted to make
this piece which was

an homage to her, actually.

And not so much around
the hair straightening,

but in the, just the
basic badassedness of her,

'cause this is a woman
who was born in 1867,

a full 100 years before I was,

who started in the cotton
fields of the South,

and by the time she
died in 1919 in her 50s

had amassed a fortune
of a million dollars.

Realize that this is before,

well before the
Civil Rights Movement

and the Women's
Suffrage Movement.

It seems impossible,
and also realize

that because she had
that kind of money

in this capitalist country,

that it meant that she was
invited to the table, right?

So people would listen to her,

and let her speak, and she
used that money to launch

anti-lynching campaigns.

This is a piece in which

one of her most famous
quotations is stitched,

one work on each comb.

"I'm a black woman from the
cotton fields of the South.

"I was promoted to the washtub.

"I was promoted to the kitchen.

"I promoted myself to
the business of hair

on my own ground."

So, as I told you, this
is the 100th anniversary

of her passing, and so
I had a show on which to

this piece was part
of the exhibition,

and also this piece, a
nod to Ntozake Shange,

who in 1976 wrote this
amazing piece called

"For Colored Girls Who
Have Considered Suicide

When the Rainbow is Enuf."

That's comprised of an Afro wig

which I had great fun wearing
before I made the piece,

and then these combs
that are thread-wrapped.

And the last few
pieces have to do with

what my husband calls
my subtle politics

and he means that as a joke.

(audience laughs)

So I made this piece
called Writer Type

to talk about when,

whether the African
American voice is silenced,

or is this a piece in
which the typewriter

is sort of embodying
African American voice.

So is it a person or is it about

the silencing of something?

And I think that both of
those readings and more

can live in an artwork.

This piece came quickly.

I picked a Remington typewriter

because Remington was
known for providing arms

during the Civil War,

and then they switched
to typewriters,

so the pen and the
sword is in this piece.

I picked a noiseless
because of that play

that I was just talking about,

and I picked this year of
Remington Seven Noiseless,

because I'd like to think,

it's a model made in the 1930s,

and I'd like to think this
is the kind of typewriter

that Richard Wright might
have written Native Son on.

Just pretend.

And a fellow artist of
mine, Thurmond Statham said,

"Every medium has its
own hidden language."

And so I quickly
started thinking about

what would the font
for this typewriter be,

and I worked with
a graphic designer

by the name of Bo Peng
to develop this font

as a language of the typewriter.

So I used to just show the

the glyph or the font
there with the letters,

and people would say, "Oh,
that doesn't look like

it would be so hard to read."

So then I actually
want to show you

what it really looks
like when it's written.

And so even this I think about.

The great writer and
thinker Ngugi wa Thiong'o

wrote this book called
De

colonizing the African Mind ,

in which, it's a slim novel,

and he gives a call out
to other African writers,

and he said "Please,
please, please

"write in your native tongue.

"Otherwise, we'll lose it,

"and people won't
understand the metaphors

"that we have in language.

We'll lose the language." Right?

It's a beautiful thing.

I mean those of you who
are bi or trilingual

know that there's
some things that

literally don't translate
from one language to another.

So it's not just for
the loss of metaphors,

the loss of a way
of thinking, right?

So he made this petition.

I met Ngugi wa Thiong'o
not too long ago.

I read the book years before,

but he came to Amherst
College not too long ago,

and as I was talking to this
phenomenal man who should,

in my opinion, have won a
Nobel Prize many years ago,

I realized, oh my
gosh, but even

if a Yuroba person
writes a book in Yuroba

what is the font?

I mean maybe if an Ethiopian
person writes a book

it might be in Amharic right?

But or maybe it
could be in Arabic,

if it's someone else.

But the, it's going to
be in the Roman alphabet.

Like European hegemony is
just, it's a big thing.

(audience murmuring)

So I'm going to try and
teach everyone to know

the Confederate flag of truce

and to learn the twist font.

Those are my charges
for the rest of my life.

(audience chuckles)

So I want to share with you
this idea of language and hair,

and I think
sometimes as artists,

you know that famous quote,

good artists borrow,
great artists steal?

So I'm going to put
myself in the category of

great artist here, 'cause
I just stole this idea

'cause I'm confessing
to you, remember?

I'm confessing.

I had heard that
there was a barber

who would give little
boys free haircuts

if they read to him in an
African American neighborhood

and I just loved that idea.

So a friend of mine,
Scott Cunningham,

runs a poetry festival in Miami,

and it's a small
mission to, in April,

which is Poetry Month,

expose everyone in
Miami-Dade County to a poem.

A little mission (chuckles).

So he invites artists, and
artists do huge gestures like

painting a poem on top of
the Big Box Store right,

in the flight path, so that
people get exposure to a poem,

sky writing poems, small
interventions

like going to Goodwill,

and putting a poem tucked in
to the label of a garment.

But what I stole was this
idea from this barber.

So I asked these
African American men

in these two neighborhoods
in Miami Overtown

African American,
and then Little Haiti

to read a poem, a
very specific poem

by Calvin Hernton, the
late Calvin Hernton.

If you don't know
Calvin Hernton,

he was a professor,
African American poet,

professor at Oberlin College,

and the poem that
he wrote in the 70s

is unfortunately

as valid
today as it was then.

And it was my great privilege

to have these men
read this poem.

And I'll recite it for
you 'cause I know it.

In fact it's,

well, I'll recite it to you.

The poem's called
"The Distant Drum."

"I am not a metaphor

"or a symbol.

"This you hear

"is not the wind in the
trees

"nor is it a cat

"being maimed in the streets.

"I am being maimed
in the streets.

"It is I who weep,

"laugh, feel pain, or joy.

"Speak this because I exist.

"This is my voice.

"These words are my words.

"My mouth speaks them.

"My hand writes.

"It is my fist
you hear beating

against your ear."

Questions, comments?

So the dust.

It's literally dust
from two institutions

that have to do with
the Declaration.

Declaration House,
Independence Hall, right?

So this is a piece
that we had planned.

You know I was an
artist in residence

at the Fabric
Workshop and Museum,

which meant that they just
asked me to come a lot

over 18 months.

So this piece had
been in the plans

and the works for
a while and I said

it really is important to me

that we're in this
historic city,

that we gather dust
from a historic site

that has something
to do with this text.

And the staff there
went about it,

and they talked to some curators

at some historic museums.

We've got the dust,
no problem, great.

This is literally like

the stuff that comes out
of their vacuum cleaners.

Like it's the dirt of
the institution, right.

So we're just saying
can we have your dust.

(audience laughs)

Yeah, like what you're
about to throw away,

can we have that?

And about three weeks
before the show opened,

the institution
that had said yes,

a curator said yes, the
museum staff said yes,

it went up and then
someone said "No,

you can't have our dust."

(audience laughs)

So apparently a black girl
can't have someone's dust.

(audience laughs)

I mean I can't even have it
to clean it up (chuckles)

as Ella Watson.

But then, and that institution
shall remain unnamed.

But then these two other
institutions stepped forward

and they were actually
more better suited

for their relevance
to the Declaration.

So, I often think about that
in the terms of reversals,

because I realize that
people will come after me,

and they do, for
the work that I do,

saying "You have no
right to use a flag

to clean a floor."

Well it's not a
flag, it's a towel,

and you printed it.

(audience laughs)

Right?

But when someone was like,

"No, you can't even have our
dust,"

I was like really?

(audience laughs)

Anyway, is there
another question for me?

I want everyone to
know this truce flag,

and not because I think
that it's all about peace.

In fact I think it's
a complicated symbol

because the more that
you know about the truce,

there's a historian
that just wrote a book.

I cannot remember the
name of the book, sorry.

But his name is David
Silkenat, and he--

Did someone know the
name of the book?

- [Woman In Audience]
Raise the White Flag .

- Raise the White
Flag , thank you.

Yes Madison audience
(audience laughs).

The collective wisdom,
collective wisdom.

So, David Silkenat and I
reached out to each other

around this, because
it was just April 9th

that the truce flag was flown,

and his book just came
out in early April,

and my show just
opened in late March,

so it's like aw, we
found each other,

and people connected us.

And one thing that's clear
as I'm reading this book

is how easy it was
for Confederate
soldiers to surrender.

They would just say
like, "Oh, you know like

this is tough, I
want to surrender."

And they wouldn't be
made prisoners of war.

There's all this
gentleman's agreement stuff

that was happening.

Which then makes so much
sense when you realize like

nothing was ever taken away.

Like, you're enemies
of the state,

but nothing's ever taken away.

Because there's, I guess
there's this recognition

that we all know, right,

that what the South
was holding on to

was the dirty business
that the North

had been involved in not so
many years before, right.

So there's this sense of like

"You're just a little
slower than us.

We're just not doing
that anymore (chuckles)."

I mean I'm understating this,
gravely,

but it's a complicated symbol.

Truth and reconciliation is
complicated work,

and so I just feel if we focus
on the peace brokering,

and that we might be a little
further along than we are.

And I just love the idea
that there are children,

who came to, and
will continue coming

to the show at the
Fabric Workshop,

who will have the opportunity

to sit at the loom and
weave a truce flag,

you know, participate
in weaving a truce flag,

cause it takes a long
time to make cloth.

It takes a long
time to undo cloth,

it takes a long to make cloth.

Or they can sit at
an old school desk

and do a rubbing, of
an old school desk

that has been etched with
a texture of the truce flag

and they can do a rubbing,
black Tyvek, white crayon

and take that with them.

Or they might just walk
into a space and say

"That's a really big cloth.

What's that?"

And it might just
lodge back there

in the same way that
the Dukes of Hazzard

is in my mind (audience laughs)

as being a thing.

Right?

I made a piece very early on.

My graduate thesis work
was a kente cloth strip

woven piece that's, you know,

that's just for the
textile people in the room,

that so it in part looked
like West African cloth,

and in part looked
like an American flag

and I was thinking about
issues of nomenclature,

like my grandmother
would call people colored

and then there was negro, and
then there was black,

and then there was Afro
American and then there was

African American.

I'm fond of black, personally.

It's a little bit more diasporic

but that's my personal thing.

When I say African
American I usually mean

African Americans.

And so I was just thinking about

how all of those name
changes are trying to

attend to something
but ultimately,

there's something about identity

that lives on in cloth.

It's great to have
people in the audience

who knew me when I was
like wet behind the ears

assistant professor
because it is true

that I'm now looking
back on my work

and I'm realizing that I
think my work is better

when people are engaged in it,

and so the project that
Joy Door is referring to

is a project that had a
lot of play in Wisconsin

when I was here called The
Beaded Prayers Project,

and it was based on the
etymology of the word bead

and prayer, shared etymology
because of rosary beads.

You know this mnemonic
device, a bead,

helps you know where you
are in your prayer cycle

so when a old English beden

is the word that means to pray,

and also the word
that we get bead from.

And I invited
people to write down

wishes, hopes, dreams,
and aspirations,

and make these amulets
that were then beaded,

and that project actually,

every time I think it's going
to go to bed it lives again,

so we're showing it again at

the Textile Museum in D.C.

And strangely, though
I haven't read this,

I was told that someone left
me this card right here,

and it's someone who,

who I must have done a
beaded prayers project with

'cause there is one.

(audience murmurs in awe)

There was another question?

Well nobody's
getting truce flags,

reparations, reparations.

(audience laughs heartily)

So it's an interesting
thing, right,

because there actually is
a piece of the truce flag

that's at Appomattox at
the museum at Appomattox,

and when I called Appomattox
to get information about it,

the person that I
got on the phone

that I was told was the curator,

someone who knew something,

said to me, and keep in mind,

I've seen the one
at the Smithsonian

and this person said to me,

"Oh we have the largest piece."

No, I was almost a math major,

but I know if something's
divided in half.

(audience laughs heartily)

So I had more questions.

I said, "Well how large is your
piece?"

And this gentleman told
me that it was, you know,

a couple inches by
a couple inches,

and I said "Do you not
know that there's--"

but not with this much attitude,

"Do you not know that
the nation's museum,

two hours north of
you has half (sighs)?"

Anyway, but it's not
what the focus is.

It's not what's being
amplified, right?

And so the other thing
that I want to say

is that I don't think
of the truce flag work,

this Monumental Cloth work
as being a Southern issue.

Again, Richmond's story,
and the Civil War's story,

but Richmond's story,
is not a Southern story,

it's not an American story,

it's a global story.

The truce flag also fits
right into that category,

in my opinion.

But it is going to have
a venue in the South,

eventually, (laughs) yeah.

Thank you.

(heavy applause)