Confederate, Surrender

When the Confederate Army surrendered to Union forces at Appomattox in 1865, ending the Civil War, a soldier found an off-white dishcloth with thin red stripes to use as a flag of truce. Afro-Caribbean textile artist Sonya Clark (b. 1967, Washington, D.C.) came across a fragment of this cloth in the Smithsonian’s collection and began to ask what it would mean to the psychology of this nation if the truce flag replaced the Confederate battle flag as the enduring symbol of the Civil War. Clark produced a monumental replica of the truce flag in 2019, which was acquired by the Smithsonian. Clark later produced this handmade paper version, Confederate, Surrender, with a publisher in Los Angeles. Clark has interrogated the Confederate battle flag in several pieces, including Unraveling, in which she invited audience members to deconstruct the Confederate battle flag thread by thread.

Within the Allen’s collection, Clark’s work joins a doily painting by fellow Trinidadian artist Zak Ové, and other artists who combine textile, thread, and paper-making techniques such as Ambreen Butt, Ghada Amer, Willie Cole, Jean Shin, and Leslie Dill. The work also adds to flags and representations of flags in the Allen’s collection, including Haitian Vodou flags and depictions of the American flag in works by Peter Saul, Alexander Calder, and others. This piece will foster conversation around collective memory, monuments and memorialization, craft and fiber arts, as well as race, racism, and Civil War history.
Provenance(Mixografia, Los Angeles); purchased 2022 by Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH

Collections

• Modern & Contemporary
• On View