Artist Carletta Carrington Wilson considers the direct relationship between literacy and the power of self-determination, particularly for field laborers who were enslaved. The artist discusses the legacy of anti-literacy laws in this statement on her work:
“That in any slave state a field hand should learn to read is remarkable..." -- Frederick Douglass
Twisted and knotted paper lines constitute a unique form of correspondence in the series field notes. Each letter-sized collage’s message is signed with an X, the universal signature of an illiterate person. They are joined, in this show, by works best described as signs and signifiers.
Unlike those who labored in close proximity with masters and mistresses, field hands would not hand over or handle newspapers, letters, books, diaries or journals. They did not witness children learning to read and write. Upon emancipation, learning to read and write became paramount for the enslaved. That string of knotty lines, that threaded trail pointed to the possibility of unimaginable freedoms. Comprehending the spell cast by letters could only enable a person to further dispel the conditions created by dint of their enslavement.
Language is a visual medium, one by which form, shape and color inform an eye and shape a mind. Through the lens of history, I visit and revisit the role language has played in the creation of a past and the scripting of its future.
My work is an exploration of the “text of textiles.” The exhibit, field notes, reconstructs the field as a landscape of literature, its rows written upon by hands mapping a place of ancestral memory in code.
Meet the artist at a reception she is hosting in the library this Thursday, June 6, from 5 to 7pm. She will also be speaking about her work on June 20 in the library, beginning at 5 pm.
