In the Shadow of Dixie

Atmospheric intervention and durational performance, 2018

On August 10, 2018, I began staging interventions on Confederate monuments in eight cities across Georgia that I once called home.

Each structure remains protected by state law. The performances consisted of sitting in the monument’s shadow while handwriting a series of custom designed and Offset-printed postcards. Two cards were sent to every politician with jurisdiction over each space.

The first card established my connection to the space and an argument for why I believe the structures are inappropriate. The second card urged the person to reconsider the law and to make a public statement on their position on the presence of these monuments in public spaces.

Old Slave Market on Broad Street, Louisville, GA

Commemorative mural of Old Slave Market on Broad Street, Louisville, GA

In the Shadow of Dixie:

A Tale of Four Cities

Multimedia Installation

The documentation of In the Shadow of Dixie has become its own intervention and form of resistance. Constructed into multimedia installations that illuminate, inform, and call their audiences to action, these works draw attention to the role Southern women played in organizing and funding those monuments and my role as a Black, Southern-born and raised woman organizing against them. The installation’s configuration and aesthetics foregrounds the politics of display and questions the neutrality of interpretive text.