Artwork Details
- Title
- Monumental
- Artist
- Date
- 2019
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 185 × 375 in. (469.9 × 952.5 cm)
- Copyright
- © 2019, Sonya Y.S. Clark
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the American Women’s History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, and the Kenneth R. Trapp Acquisition Fund
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- woven linen with madder dye and tea stain
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Abstract
- Object Number
- 2022.13
Artwork Description
Sonya Clark weaves stories that celebrate Blackness while interrogating the historical roots of racial injustice in the United States. Monumental was inspired by objects in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. During a visit to the museum, Clark discovered the white dishtowel waved at Appomattox Court House in 1865 to signal the Confederate army’s surrender in the American Civil War. It made her wonder, “What if this flag of truce was the flag we knew, instead of the Confederate battle flag?” Clark set out to create a monumental version of the symbol. The scale and presentation intentionally reference the Star-Spangled Banner, another iconic object in the National Museum of American History’s collection.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the paths toward emancipation and reconstruction were violent. The legacy of slavery—the core issue of the Civil War—continues to trouble the political, cultural, and social landscape into this present moment. Monumental holds the self-evident truths of American history in its humble threads and offers a different perspective: “Imagine if each time we reached for the dishcloth by our sinks, we recalled the war waged by yesteryear’s enemies of the country and their surrender,” reflects Clark. “Are we creating the future we desire through what we do, how we are, and what we make?”
This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, 2022
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