In a second-floor gallery at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Sonya Clark (CRF 2012) used a dish towel printed with an image of the Confederate battle flag to clean a layer of dust from a section of the Declaration of Independence inscribed on concrete floor.
The silent, 20-minute performance accompanied the opening of Ms. Clark’s exhibition titled “Monumental Cloth, the Flag We Should Know,” in which she highlights the little-known Confederate Flag of Truce, a dish towel used by Confederate forces to surrender the Civil War at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865.
That the truce flag — now housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — is overshadowed in popular culture by the battle flag is, Ms. Clark argued, a sign that America has yet to erase a racist past that sparked the Civil War.
By giving new prominence to the truce flag through its scale and number at the exhibition, Ms. Clark is hoping that people will accept it as the symbol of reconciliation that it was meant to be, in contrast to the battle flag that opponents see as an emblem of division and defiance.
Read the full Times article on Sonya Clark’s performance and exhibition here.