“WE ARE EACH OTHER – THE WORK OF SONYA CLARK”

 “WE ARE EACH OTHER – THE WORK OF SONYA CLARK”

Caroline and I were blessed to be able to attend the High Museum of Art’s exhibit of Sonya Clark’s textile work on its last weekend in town in mid-February.  I’m not much on textile art (one of my many shortcomings), but this was a stunning exhibit, and I want to lift her witness as part of Women’s History Month. She was born in 1967, and this is what she said about her heritage:

"I was born in Washington DC to a psychiatrist from Trinidad and a nurse from Jamaica. I gained an appreciation for craft and the value of the handmade from my maternal grandmother who was a professional tailor. Many of my family members taught me the value of a well-told story and so it is that I value the stories held in objects.”

The title of her exhibit at the High was “We Are Each Other.”  She was inspired by a Gwendolyn Brooks poem “Paul Robeson” (1970) which closes with, “we are each other’s harvest/we are each other’s business/we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”  The emphasis of the exhibit was that in our age of extreme individualism, we all belong to one another, and we all are collaborations of many folks.  In one interview, she noted that she herself was the result of a collaboration of her parents, hopefully for more than twenty minutes, as she put it.  Her themes of collaboration and interaction and engaging our diversities were powerfully demonstrated in the High’s exhibit.

Clark’s work is no sentimental hope that we all should just get along.  Her work invites the observer to participate in her art work and to develop the collaboration as we go.  Because of space limitations, I’ve chosen five projects that crossed many boundaries with a deep amount of integrity.  The High exhibit began with her “Beaded Prayers Project,” begun in 1998, in which found objects were woven, glued, tied, into a larger background.  I counted 135 of these panels, most of which have been made by observers and participants in Ms. Clark’s art work.  It is an ever-expanding work, in which people are asked to acknowledge their roots, note their pain, and look to the future.

Second was a wall hanging of Madame C.J. Walker, the first African-American woman millionaire, having made her fortune through selling products for Black women’s hair.  The wall hanging was made entirely of plastic hair combs – combs that are used to shape and beautify Black’s women’s hair.  The hanging was huge, and as we got closer to it, we noted that various parts of the combs were missing, the newly shaped pieces fashioned together to make up the portrait of Madame Walker.  Black women’s hair has long been a central focus of the struggle against racism’s desire to demean and diminish the humanity of those classified as “Black” in our culture.  The need and the desire to straighten Black women’s hair so that it looks like white women’s hair is still a powerful force in American culture.

Clark took on this power of white supremacy to seek to dictate Black humanity and beauty in her Hair Craft Project.  She and fellow artists noted the power and the resonance of the curliness of Black people’s hair, and Clark worked to note that this power was not only symbolic but also inspiring.  She and other artists noted the many curls of Black hair, and they developed a new language, using the curly turns of Black hair as the basis for a new alphabet for Black people.  The exhibit at the High had examples of the new alphabet and included sentences in the new language.  This project itself will take a lot more work, but it is all built on Clark’s idea of collaboration.

The last two parts of the exhibit that I want to note relate to the continuing power of the Confederacy and white supremacy.  Clark notes the stubborn tenacity of white supremacy in American culture, and she offers two approaches to it.  The first is the “Unraveling Project,” in which the participants are asked to reflect on the continuing power of the Confederacy and white supremacy in our country.  She seeks help in unraveling particular Confederate battle flags, and she notes that in this work, many of the flags are very difficult to unravel – a reality and a metaphor for the difficult work of overcoming and dismantling racism. 

I could go on and on about her work, but I want to finish on the one that touched me the most.  Ms. Clark indicated that she had been to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and while she was there, she saw an exhibit with Abraham Lincoln’s top hat.  Right beside it was a tea towel used by Robert E. Lee when he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, thus bringing an end to the Civil War.  The tea towel was white linen with a subtle red stripe at the bottom, and the tea towels that were at Appomattox were cut up and distributed to various soldiers on that day of surrender.  Clark wondered aloud (though she knew the answer) why that tea towel had not become the symbol of the Confederacy rather than the battle flag.  She wants to make the Confederate tea towel much better known, and she made a huge hanging of the towels woven together.  She also encouraged us attendees to make our own Confederate tea towels and asked us to help make this the symbol of the Confederacy.  Maybe Donald Trump’s supporters will use the tea towel symbol when they storm the next government building.

Sonya Clark is a stunning and remarkable artist – if you don’t know her work (which I did not), look her up and learn from her powerful insights and provocative art.  She teaches at Amherst, and we are all the better off for her artistic vision and work.