Reversals with Sonya Clark

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 30, Sonya Clark will activate one of our galleries with a symbolic reversal. For this special one-time performance, the gallery floor will be covered with dust gathered from historical sites in Philadelphia. Wearing a reproduction of the dress worn by Ella Watson in American Gothic, the iconic photograph by the late Gordon Parks, the artist will use a Confederate Battle Flag dishtowel (commercially available and purchased from an online vendor) to clean the floor and in turn, reveal a passage of text from the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Stenciled onto the terrazzo concrete gallery floor using a mixture of dust and matte medium, the revealed text will remain on view for the duration of Clark’s exhibition, Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know.