Description:
Confederate battle flag with dangling unraveled threads
Label Text:
This cloth measures the slow pace of unmaking a symbol of racial hate. Flags are powerful things, and the Confederate battle flag, in particular, propels revisionist myths of the Civil War and visualizes white supremacy. But the power of this flag need not be inevitable.
During performances of "Unraveling," Clark invites visitors to join her in unpicking, thread by thread, the weave of this Confederate battle flag. It is painstaking work to deconstruct the cloth, onerous and difficult on the fingers. The intent is not to destroy the flag but to investigate what it means to take it apart, a metaphor for the slow and deliberate work of unraveling racial dynamics in the United States.
Tags:
symbolism; time-based works; conceptual art; flags; civil rights; African American; textile fabrics; slavery; wars Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2018.11 |
