Sonya Clark: Finding Freedom
October 1, 2021 to January 17, 2022 Jepson CenterSonya Clark: Finding Freedom consists of a large-scale canopy quilted together from cyanotype reactive fabric squares that were made with the help of workshop participants over the course of Clark’s various residencies. Draped as a night sky overhead, the work offers a celestial viewpoint that encourages us to consider freedom seeking enslaved individuals whose forced labor built the wealth of this nation. Often under cover of night with bounty hunters at their heels, they used the constellations like the Big Dipper to orient their way North along the Underground Railroad—a network of people, safe houses, and clandestine routes used by enslaved people in the early to mid-19th century to escape from states, such as Georgia, that sanctioned slavery, into Northern states and Canada. This consideration of history can be expanded to the present day as visitors question what finding freedom truly means in a world that continues to grapple with the traumas of the past as they persist in our present.
About the Artist:
Sonya Clark is a Professor of Art and the History of Art at Amherst College in Massachusetts and was a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA from Amherst College where she also received an honorary doctorate in 2015. Her work has been exhibited in more than 400 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. She is the recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award, an 1858 Prize, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award.
Sonya Clark: Finding Freedom is part of Telfair Museums’ Legacy of Slavery in Savannah Initiative, a multiyear project which engages local Savannahians, artist, scholars, and activists to consider how the legacies of slavery still manifest in our city. This exhibition is organized by the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College in collaboration with Telfair Museums and is curated by Amy Moorefield. The presentation of this exhibition at Telfair Museums is curated by Erin Dunn, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.
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View image 1 in lightbox:
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Workshop to create constellation patterns on cyanotype fabric
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View image 2 in lightbox:
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Workshop to create constellation patterns on cyanotype fabric
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View image 3 in lightbox:
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Installation view of Finding Freedom at the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA; courtesy of Deb Grove, Franklin & Marshall College Staff Photographer.
Annual exhibition support provided by Director’s Circle Council Members:
| Bob Faircloth Curtis and Elizabeth Anderson Anonymous Mr. and Mrs. Dale C. Critz, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Dale C. Critz, Sr. Alice and Bob Jepson Mr. and Mrs. Theodore J. Kleisner Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Levy Mr. and Mrs. Angus C. Littlejohn Wilson and Linda Fisk Morris Dave and Sylvaine Neises Thomas V. and Susan G. Reilly Cathy and Philip Solomons Pamela L. and Peter S. Voss Don and Cindy Waters Ms. Susan Willetts and Mr. Alan K. Pritz
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Gloria and Durwood Almkuist Leda Chong and Kevin Dewalt Lindsay and Brent Harlander Mr. and Mrs. Patrick J. Haynes III Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Hinnant Mr. and MRs. Doug Johnston Mr. and Mrs. Myron Kaminsky Kelley and Josh Keller Mrs. Robert O. Levitt Linda and Tom McWhorter Mr. and Mrs. J. Herbert Ogden, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. David E. Paddison Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Rabinowitz Ms. Swann Seiler Randall and Valerie Stolt |
