Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other
Sonya Clark is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the experiences of the African diaspora in the United States. Clark’s astute application of ordinary fibre materials, including hair and thread, and her communal approach to these works profoundly engages viewers artistically and intellectually. She often explores the power of community and collective response in the stance against the impacts of colonialism and racial oppression. Clark is also a professor of art at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She is determined as both an artist and educator to empower people to learn, contribute to applicable dialogue, and, as she puts it, to “claim agency in what happens next in the future of our society.”
Image: The Hair Craft Project (Left: The Hair Craft Project: Hairstyles on Canvas, 2013; Right: The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya, 2014. Left: Silk threads, beads, shells, and yarn on canvas; Right: Pigment prints on archival paper. Left (towards center): Anita Hill-Moses, Marsha Johnson, Ife Robinson, Ingrid Riley, Jamilah Williams, Natasha Superville, Jasmine and Jameika Pollard and Dionne James Eggleston; Right (towards center): Marsha Johnson, Ife Robinson, Ingrid Riley, Jamilah Williams, Natasha Superville, Jasmine and Jameika Pollard and Dionne James Eggleston, Chaunda King, Kamela Bhagat and Nasirah Muhammad.
The Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other travelling exhibition, shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and now at the Museum of Arts and Designs, New York, USA, chronicles an extensive timeline of Clark’s community-focused artistic endeavours. The exhibition derives its name from the 1970 poem “Paul Robeson” written by Gwendolyn Brooks, an accomplished African American poet. The poem is a tribute to the titular actor and activist, who also broke barriers in his field. In the poem Brooks concludes, “we are each other’s / harvest: / we are each other’s / business: we are each other’s / magnitude and bond.” For Clark, the exhibition provides an opportunity for her to add to what she calls “the ancestral archive with purpose” through interdependence and unity, a mission she fulfils with compelling artistic merit through a series of ongoing participatory and other collaborative works.
Clark’s artistic relationship with cloth and textiles took significant shape at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she received an MFA in fibre. In an exhibition video, she describes an exchange with artist Sam Gilliam that challenged her to engage cloth’s power. The epiphany came as Gilliam explained the cultural significance of woven textiles for African diaspora. “Others look to a monument,” he said. “We look to a piece of cloth.” Clark reinterpreted these words as “Cloth is a monument,” emphasising its monumental significance over its stone or metal counterparts. “Cloth has power,” she noted, “and it can be used for good, and it can be used for ill. . . . I try to use it for good.”
Image: Monumental, 2019, Woven linen and madder dye, Sonya Clark.
In that same vein, Clark’s Monumental Cloth Series, through works like Many, Monumental, and Scrolls from Reconstruction Exercise, examines the cloth that brought an end to the American Civil War: the Confederate truce flag. While at the National Museum of American History, she stumbled upon an age-yellowed waffle weave cloth with thin red lines placed next to a top hat she correctly assumed belonged to Abraham Lincoln. This modest, unassuming dishcloth, not much different from one in her own kitchen, marked a shift in the trajectory of American history; and for her, it became a powerful signifier for the surrender of white supremacy. Impacted by its relative obscurity, Clark seeks to bring this monumental cloth to the forefront to help further advance America’s journey toward freedom and equality.
In Many, Clark uses a hundred waffle-weave cloths, all the same size as the original truce flag, to represent repeated ongoing efforts towards reparations and social justice. With Monumental Clark reproduced the flag at 100 times its original size. The cloth was woven in three sections on industrial looms and stitched together by hand. Like the original, madder root is used for yarns to create its characteristic red lines and it maintains a functional but enlarged waffle weave structure. Clark insisted on its functional structure as a symbolic representation of the work still needed for social justice – therefore, the cloth must work both physically and metaphorically. Intersections of layered, intertwined yarns are evident through its scale and denote her attention to detail.
Clark does not dismiss her community-focused objectives with this series. She believes that learning experiences should engage the body through action or movement if it is to be indelible. And that we should in effect “dance the knowledge of that history and that cloth” through physical engagement. As such, viewers can make their own truce flags by making a takeaway print from rubbings on paper. The waffle-weave texture on laser-etched desks is transferred to paper using white crayon, while red crayons are used to add the red lines. On designated museum days, visitors could weave portions of a truce flag on a traditional wooden loom, thus partaking in Clark’s conjoint call to confront hate and injustice, while gaining insight into the elaborate process of loom weaving. The resulting elongated textiles from past cumulative endeavours were exhibited as part of an ongoing collaboration titled Scrolls from Reconstruction Exercise.
Image: Unraveling, 2015 - present, Cotton Confederate battle flag, Sonya Clark.
Clark’s Unraveling and Unraveled series is another nod to her communal sensibilities and centres on similar themes. She advocates the dismantling of racism, segregation, and oppression through Unraveling, an ongoing performance art project during which Clark and visitors unravel the Confederate flag by hand, hence, deconstructing it physically and symbolically. Corresponding works include Unraveled: Persistence, a nylon Confederate flag with its weft meticulously removed by the artist and Unraveled, three small piles of red, white, and blue thread from a disassembled cotton Confederate battle flag. These threads suggest the potential for reconstruction or reweaving into new symbols that champion the eradication of White supremacy and herald equality and justice.
What was perhaps most interesting about this exhibition of work is Clark’s application and exploration of Black hair, which she employs masterfully as both subject matter and an artistic fibre medium. The duality in its application and representation is quite extraordinary and rather impactful. Clark also makes consistent connections between hair as a physical manifestation of one’s DNA, and therefore, one’s ancestry, identity, and spirituality.
Image: Madam C. J. Walker, 2008, Plastic Combs, Sonya Clark.
Viewers were notably impressed by Clark’s metaphoric use of real Black hair. Edifice and Mortar replaces mortar in a brick wall with hair gathered from African American salons in Richmond, Virginia. Clark tactfully illustrates African American contributions of physical labour in building structures that sustained the economy and advancement of the South. Each brick is symbolically stamped, and “acknowledges slavery’s legacy [and seeks to] make visible the invisible labour of our forebears,” as Clark says. In Constellations, her own hair is used to create stellar arrangements on this wall installation. Her intent is to memorialise the struggle of enslaved people with whom she shares her ancestry. They sought freedom from slavery with the Underground Railroad using the starry night sky as their compass to free northern states.
Through other works Clark draws distinct parallels between fibre art and hairdressing, and thread and hair, specifically in the context of traditional African hairweaving techniques. She likens hairdressers to textile artists who weave the curled texture of Black hair into tapestries of artistic expression. These similarities are wonderfully exemplified in the Hair Craft Project, which includes two parallel series of works completed in collaboration with twelve Black hairdressers.
Drawing from her prior Wig Series, featuring three-dimensional hairstyles made from braided or wrapped cotton fibres, Clark invited these hairdressers to fashion hairstyles on cloth canvas using thread and other optional items of embellishment as their media. Black strands of silk thread extend from the canvas and converge through varied combinations of braids, thread wrapping and decorative shells to form detailed hair designs. Some include visible messages and symbols; others form rhythmic patterns or take on a more sculptural form. One notably spells out “Good Hair,” a declaration of empowerment countering negative perceptions of Black hair and beauty.
Image: Scrolls from Reconstruction Exercise, 2019 - present, collaboratively handwoven linen Confederate flag of truce, Unknown (collaborative).
Clark invited these Black hairdressers to use her head as a canvas for The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya. Her hair was styled into intricate designs using traditional African hair braiding techniques. The outcome was a series of photographs featuring each hairstylist with Clark, who appears in the foreground with her back to the camera revealing the unique intersection of braids and curls each hairstylist conceived.
Although the hairstyles created by the same hairstylists in both series are not exact replications, the correlation between both modes of craft is vividly and creatively articulated. Their designation as textile artists is wonderfully validated through Clark’s communal commissions. Both Hair Craft Project series are strategically exhibited on opposite sides in a narrowed passage so viewers can draw the same visual conclusions. Interestingly, the walkway also serves as a segway between works that primarily use Black hair as a springboard manifested through other media, including Twist, Clark’s hair-inspired typography project, the Wig Series, and Madam C. J. Walker, as well as those that extend its use as a medium such as Edifice and Mortar and Constellations to also catalyse deliberation.
Image: The Hair Craft Project: Hairstyles on Canvas, 2013, Silk threads, beads, shells, and yarn on canvas, Anita Hill-Moses, Marsha Johnson, Ife Robinson, Ingrid Riley, Jamilah Williams, Natasha Superville, Jasmine and Jameika Pollard and Dionne James Eggleston.
Her towering portrait, Madam C. J. Walker, depicts the first self-made female millionaire in America. It is constructed of fine-tooth combs – over 3,000, in fact. Each square is configured by layering the combs and breaking their teeth to form visual gradations in value. Their vertical and horizontal placement resembles the weft and warp threads of a large, woven tapestry. Walker built her hair product empire, marketing products to the Black community. Despite being unable to vote due to her race and gender, she was instrumental in financially empowering other Black women. Clark also sought to challenge gender roles by using gendered combs to pay homage to this powerful, enterprising Black female figure who rose to great heights in a male-dominated society.
The exhibition concludes with Clark’s textile-focused work, including Finding Freedom. Drawing from the history of the Underground Railroad, Clark uses an installation of light-sensitive cyanotype fabric to replicate the night sky. Here a large patchwork canopy mimics the pattern of stars that served as a celestial navigation for those fleeing slavery by heading north. Clark specifically chose patchwork for the large fabric installation because of its ties to community quilting in African American cultural history. She recreates the navigation experience for visitors by inviting them to use flashlights to locate the Big Dipper constellations embedded in the cloth stretched above the dim space. The light, starry speckles are created by plant seeds used to intentionally block a photosensitive colouring process and remain white. Most visitors observed were unable to locate them. For Clark, this installation also emphasises the deliberate and unified effort needed to advocate for liberation.
The Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other exhibition is a thought-provoking experience rooted in excellent craftsmanship that fosters personal, social, and creative reflection. Despite the delicate nature of its explored themes, Clark’s work seems more focused on facilitating awareness, connection, and collective empowerment rather than trauma and division.
Guest edited by Ndirika Ekuma-Nkama
The travelling exhibition will be on display at the Museum of Arts and Designs, New York, USA until 22 September 2024 and is the result of a three-institution collaboration between the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Detroit, Michigan, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Museum of Arts and Designs in New York City, New York. The reviewed exhibition at the High Museum of Art was curated by Monica Obniski, curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the museum.
The Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other travelling exhibition, shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and now at the Museum of Arts and Designs, New York, USA, chronicles an extensive timeline of Clark’s community-focused artistic endeavours. The exhibition derives its name from the 1970 poem “Paul Robeson” written by Gwendolyn Brooks, an accomplished African American poet. The poem is a tribute to the titular actor and activist, who also broke barriers in his field. In the poem Brooks concludes, “we are each other’s / harvest: / we are each other’s / business: we are each other’s / magnitude and bond.” For Clark, the exhibition provides an opportunity for her to add to what she calls “the ancestral archive with purpose” through interdependence and unity, a mission she fulfils with compelling artistic merit through a series of ongoing participatory and other collaborative works.
Clark’s artistic relationship with cloth and textiles took significant shape at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she received an MFA in fibre. In an exhibition video, she describes an exchange with artist Sam Gilliam that challenged her to engage cloth’s power. The epiphany came as Gilliam explained the cultural significance of woven textiles for African diaspora. “Others look to a monument,” he said. “We look to a piece of cloth.” Clark reinterpreted these words as “Cloth is a monument,” emphasising its monumental significance over its stone or metal counterparts. “Cloth has power,” she noted, “and it can be used for good, and it can be used for ill. . . . I try to use it for good.”
In that same vein, Clark’s Monumental Cloth Series, through works like Many, Monumental, and Scrolls from Reconstruction Exercise, examines the cloth that brought an end to the American Civil War: the Confederate truce flag. While at the National Museum of American History, she stumbled upon an age-yellowed waffle weave cloth with thin red lines placed next to a top hat she correctly assumed belonged to Abraham Lincoln. This modest, unassuming dishcloth, not much different from one in her own kitchen, marked a shift in the trajectory of American history; and for her, it became a powerful signifier for the surrender of white supremacy. Impacted by its relative obscurity, Clark seeks to bring this monumental cloth to the forefront to help further advance America’s journey toward freedom and equality.
In Many, Clark uses a hundred waffle-weave cloths, all the same size as the original truce flag, to represent repeated ongoing efforts towards reparations and social justice. With Monumental Clark reproduced the flag at 100 times its original size. The cloth was woven in three sections on industrial looms and stitched together by hand. Like the original, madder root is used for yarns to create its characteristic red lines and it maintains a functional but enlarged waffle weave structure. Clark insisted on its functional structure as a symbolic representation of the work still needed for social justice – therefore, the cloth must work both physically and metaphorically. Intersections of layered, intertwined yarns are evident through its scale and denote her attention to detail.
Clark does not dismiss her community-focused objectives with this series. She believes that learning experiences should engage the body through action or movement if it is to be indelible. And that we should in effect “dance the knowledge of that history and that cloth” through physical engagement. As such, viewers can make their own truce flags by making a takeaway print from rubbings on paper. The waffle-weave texture on laser-etched desks is transferred to paper using white crayon, while red crayons are used to add the red lines. On designated museum days, visitors could weave portions of a truce flag on a traditional wooden loom, thus partaking in Clark’s conjoint call to confront hate and injustice, while gaining insight into the elaborate process of loom weaving. The resulting elongated textiles from past cumulative endeavours were exhibited as part of an ongoing collaboration titled Scrolls from Reconstruction Exercise.
Clark’s Unraveling and Unraveled series is another nod to her communal sensibilities and centres on similar themes. She advocates the dismantling of racism, segregation, and oppression through Unraveling, an ongoing performance art project during which Clark and visitors unravel the Confederate flag by hand, hence, deconstructing it physically and symbolically. Corresponding works include Unraveled: Persistence, a nylon Confederate flag with its weft meticulously removed by the artist and Unraveled, three small piles of red, white, and blue thread from a disassembled cotton Confederate battle flag. These threads suggest the potential for reconstruction or reweaving into new symbols that champion the eradication of White supremacy and herald equality and justice.
What was perhaps most interesting about this exhibition of work is Clark’s application and exploration of Black hair, which she employs masterfully as both subject matter and an artistic fibre medium. The duality in its application and representation is quite extraordinary and rather impactful. Clark also makes consistent connections between hair as a physical manifestation of one’s DNA, and therefore, one’s ancestry, identity, and spirituality.
Viewers were notably impressed by Clark’s metaphoric use of real Black hair. Edifice and Mortar replaces mortar in a brick wall with hair gathered from African American salons in Richmond, Virginia. Clark tactfully illustrates African American contributions of physical labour in building structures that sustained the economy and advancement of the South. Each brick is symbolically stamped, and “acknowledges slavery’s legacy [and seeks to] make visible the invisible labour of our forebears,” as Clark says. In Constellations, her own hair is used to create stellar arrangements on this wall installation. Her intent is to memorialise the struggle of enslaved people with whom she shares her ancestry. They sought freedom from slavery with the Underground Railroad using the starry night sky as their compass to free northern states.
Through other works Clark draws distinct parallels between fibre art and hairdressing, and thread and hair, specifically in the context of traditional African hairweaving techniques. She likens hairdressers to textile artists who weave the curled texture of Black hair into tapestries of artistic expression. These similarities are wonderfully exemplified in the Hair Craft Project, which includes two parallel series of works completed in collaboration with twelve Black hairdressers.
Drawing from her prior Wig Series, featuring three-dimensional hairstyles made from braided or wrapped cotton fibres, Clark invited these hairdressers to fashion hairstyles on cloth canvas using thread and other optional items of embellishment as their media. Black strands of silk thread extend from the canvas and converge through varied combinations of braids, thread wrapping and decorative shells to form detailed hair designs. Some include visible messages and symbols; others form rhythmic patterns or take on a more sculptural form. One notably spells out “Good Hair,” a declaration of empowerment countering negative perceptions of Black hair and beauty.
Clark invited these Black hairdressers to use her head as a canvas for The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya. Her hair was styled into intricate designs using traditional African hair braiding techniques. The outcome was a series of photographs featuring each hairstylist with Clark, who appears in the foreground with her back to the camera revealing the unique intersection of braids and curls each hairstylist conceived.
Although the hairstyles created by the same hairstylists in both series are not exact replications, the correlation between both modes of craft is vividly and creatively articulated. Their designation as textile artists is wonderfully validated through Clark’s communal commissions. Both Hair Craft Project series are strategically exhibited on opposite sides in a narrowed passage so viewers can draw the same visual conclusions. Interestingly, the walkway also serves as a segway between works that primarily use Black hair as a springboard manifested through other media, including Twist, Clark’s hair-inspired typography project, the Wig Series, and Madam C. J. Walker, as well as those that extend its use as a medium such as Edifice and Mortar and Constellations to also catalyse deliberation.
Her towering portrait, Madam C. J. Walker, depicts the first self-made female millionaire in America. It is constructed of fine-tooth combs – over 3,000, in fact. Each square is configured by layering the combs and breaking their teeth to form visual gradations in value. Their vertical and horizontal placement resembles the weft and warp threads of a large, woven tapestry. Walker built her hair product empire, marketing products to the Black community. Despite being unable to vote due to her race and gender, she was instrumental in financially empowering other Black women. Clark also sought to challenge gender roles by using gendered combs to pay homage to this powerful, enterprising Black female figure who rose to great heights in a male-dominated society.
The exhibition concludes with Clark’s textile-focused work, including Finding Freedom. Drawing from the history of the Underground Railroad, Clark uses an installation of light-sensitive cyanotype fabric to replicate the night sky. Here a large patchwork canopy mimics the pattern of stars that served as a celestial navigation for those fleeing slavery by heading north. Clark specifically chose patchwork for the large fabric installation because of its ties to community quilting in African American cultural history. She recreates the navigation experience for visitors by inviting them to use flashlights to locate the Big Dipper constellations embedded in the cloth stretched above the dim space. The light, starry speckles are created by plant seeds used to intentionally block a photosensitive colouring process and remain white. Most visitors observed were unable to locate them. For Clark, this installation also emphasises the deliberate and unified effort needed to advocate for liberation.
The Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other exhibition is a thought-provoking experience rooted in excellent craftsmanship that fosters personal, social, and creative reflection. Despite the delicate nature of its explored themes, Clark’s work seems more focused on facilitating awareness, connection, and collective empowerment rather than trauma and division.
Guest edited by Ndirika Ekuma-Nkama
The travelling exhibition will be on display at the Museum of Arts and Designs, New York, USA until 22 September 2024 and is the result of a three-institution collaboration between the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Detroit, Michigan, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Museum of Arts and Designs in New York City, New York. The reviewed exhibition at the High Museum of Art was curated by Monica Obniski, curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the museum.