Ritual Cloths
“None of the Butler slaves had ever been sold before, but had lived on these two plantations since they were born. Here have they lived their humble lives and loved their simple loves; here were they born, and here had many of them had children born unto them; here had their parents lived and are now resting in quiet graves on the old plantations that these unhappy ones are to see no more—forever.”
Mortimer Thomas, “Great Auction Sale of Slaves at Savannah, Georgia”
Ritual Cloths is a textile-based series exploring one of the largest recorded slave auctions in U.S. history by paying homage to the people sold through the auction.
I referenced the parallel histories of American quilting and slave labor, employing hand-stitching and quilting aesthetics.
Osnaburg, a fabric historically known as “slave or negro cloth” and manufactured expressly for clothing enslaved people, is the primary material I used to create these works.
