Project details
The series of paintings on panel explore the recent removal of the Confederate monuments in Baltimore – and who put them there. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (and other white activist groups) were responsible for constructing false Civil War narratives and for the intense rallying around monuments to Confederate memory in the 20th century – many installed 50-90 years after the end of the Civil War. This series of paintings and prints focus on the women of the UDC, ahistorical mythmaking of the Lost Cause, and whiteness, in an attempt to reveal connections between white supremacy and the shaping of public opinion through monument building.
The paintings on panel foreground shaped silhouettes of artworks by black artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. Highlighting the traditional materials of monumental sculpture, these silhouettes are rendered in a variety of marbles, casting light on which ideas were germinated in dominant narratives of American exceptionalism.
