I currently have an installation mounted at the Redline Gallery in Milwaukee, located at 1422 N. 4th Street. DAYCLEAN which honors the memory of Denmark Vesey, a free black man, and 66 other men- who during the summer of 1822 were brought up on charges of planning an insurrection against white slave owners in the city of Charleston and were all executed by hanging. The installation consists of bottles suspended from the ceiling to represent the bodies of these men; a bottle tree (an image you see in rural parts of South Carolina and other parts of the Gullah/Geechee Corridor). The Bottle tree is a practice that was said to have come with Africans from the Congo and the bottles, hung on dead branches of trees, capture bad spirits or energy before they enter the home. Other images in the space include actual oyster shells and pine straw from Charleston. The straw evokes memory through its musty, piney scent and the shells for me represent the recovered bones of these men, whose burials are not documented.There is a video loop projected against a white brick surface, in the space, of the sun rising with spiritual music from the Yoruba lexicon and the sound of crickets in the marsh. Sun rise is called day clean in the Gullah/Geechee language. I titled this work and its ongoing investigation...DAYCLEAN because I wondered what time of day these men would have been hung and later read that it was in the early morning. Usually when one leaves for work before day light, they refer to it as Day Clean.
There is a separate monitor with interviews of black Charlestonians who live or work near the prison where these men were detained and tried. The oldest is a gentleman whose family owned a funeral home that he still operates. He remembers being a boy in that neighborhood and recalls a story about black prisoners and of a body that they received from the prison of a black man who was executed there. I will add sound bites soon.
I continue to work on expanding this conceptual work to develp a healing space that will have a memorial function to honor the integrity of each of these men. also included in and on a wall outside the space are photos I took of the interior and exterior of the Old Jail and the project buildings surrounding it.
