Part of new series, Re-historicizing. “Land Of the Blacks.” 2016. Embroidery and paint on fabric. Tells the story of Maria, an early free Black American who helped settle the land north of the southern tip of Manhattan, referred to as The Land of the Blacks from the late 1600s–approximately 1720. This area, now known as Washington Square, is where free Blacks owned farms and homes for a short time during Dutch colonial rule.
Teaching at Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, 3/26/16, about the role of free and enslaved Blacks and Africans in settling the burgeoning City of New York (while holding up art about indigo as a Southern cash crop linked to NYC, a port from which slave-processed rice, indigo and other products were sent abroad).
Indigo Trade. 2016. Paint and embroidery, applique and stuffing on fabric.
Whose stories do we canonize historically and why? Whose are erased?
Absence. Whose Story Is it? Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Indigo Trade and Slave Labor. Paint and embroidery on fabric “cut outs” pinned to board. 2016.
