SPEED MUSEUM – CLOSING PERFORMANCE OCTOBER 14
Sonya Clark, standing straight and tall, gently pats a Confederate flag folded across a work table. Respectful, thoughtful and serious, she talks about this swath of fabric that symbolizes a difficult piece of American history. For her work Unraveling, Clark has chosen a high-quality flag woven from thick, sturdy cotton and stitched together to last. In this gallery performance, she will invite visitors to work with her side-by-side to unravel the flag, carefully taking it apart thread by thread. Together they dismantle about half an inch in an hour, creating piles of red, white and blue thread. “It takes a really long time. It’s serious work.”
“Racial injustice is something that every American contends with, either consciously or unconsciously, and it’s so deeply embedded in the fabric of our nation,” she says. “The word ‘racism’ is sort of like a trigger word; you know, it can shut people’s ears off, shut people down, bring people’s defense mechanisms up. So I’m less interested in that, and more interested in picking apart and undoing and understanding the fabric of our nation and trying to really understand the roots of racial injustice.”
The cloth becomes a metaphor, something very familiar that is investigated and picked apart, she says. “Just slowing down, to think about what has happened here. It took years for us to make the Confederate flag. It’s not going to be an easy thing for us to undo.”
“I think there’s poetry in what we’re trying to do together. So the right word matters – which is not to rip, but to unravel,” Clark says. “There’s a little bit of …well, we’re picking cotton together.”
