Promiseland

HISTORIC CHARLESTON FOUNDATION AIKEN-RHETT HOUSE
CHARLESTON, S.C.
MAY - JULY 2020
CO-CURATED WITH KELLY S. TURNER

Aiken-Rhett is a complicated space. It is complex. It is traumatic and grand, a symbol of extreme wealth and class hierarchy, standing and intact. It is a powerful place and a beacon of racial subjugation both past and present. Is this exhibition an adequate critique, an activation or an engagement? Is it right to connect with this monument that sits atop a precipice of racial division, sharing the skyline with church steeples and a statue of John C. Calhoun, whose portrait also hangs prominently in the library? Is it useful to bring beauty into this space, even if to invoke the strength of Black people? Therein lies the dilemma. Promiseland addresses the legacy embodied by this house, an urban plantation, no different than the rural. Hot. Cold. Mosquito-ridden. Humid. Narrow. Small. Cramped. Confined. Demanding. Relentless. Unforgiving. But it also commemorates the dead, the forgotten, the hands that threaded the needles and laundered the clothes, that tilled the soil and struck the iron, that bridled the horses, cooked the food, filled the tubs, laid the rugs, hammered the nails, laid the bricks and sang to themselves all the while. Promiseland is a historical amendment, created for the sake of preservation and collective memory. - Fletcher Williams III

CATALOGUE

18 DOUBLE-SIDED PLATES INCLUDING ARTWORK, BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOS, AND ARTIST NOTES