Legacies of (in)humanity Work by Aaron McMullin an MFA thesis exhibition December 8, 2023 - January 7, 2024 Wildfruit Projects 4704 Virginia Ave St. Louis, MO
Introduction
by Laura Strand Through “Legacies of (in)humanity,” created by Aaron McMullin, I anticipate both positive consideration and negative disapproval. These responses must be expected when an artist’s work directly confronts the political and humanitarian failures of American society. Visual criticism enters the viewer’s mind without the barriers of protection that we have all developed against written or even spoken words. The visual object resonates deeply with our own experiences of tolerance and indifference. The lynching of innocent people of color shakes everyone to anger and shame. The images reach into a past that is outside of my participation, but it is nonetheless condemning of myself and my race. They were largely caused by women, whose lack of personal power made them seek a terrible subterfuge to hide their own choices. The majority of these horrid deaths were caused by white women who falsely accused men, all of whom were without protection from the cruelty of power and those who desired power. I am ashamed of the horrible realities of suffering that black men and boys endured. Through the great volume of continuous research that Aaron has engaged in over the past three years, she found that during the time of these tragedies, many white women had engaged their lives to fight these injustices. Can such tragedies be moderated through caring efforts toward change? This care is inadequate to right the horrid wrongs, but it shows the route that was begun by these women and charges each of us to actively work to continue toward true equality. The tools that Aaron has used to create these works speak directly to the issues engaged. The blue of water and sky are dyed with indigo, a dye that has been used worldwide for 6000 years. Rust acts on fabric as a stain shed by iron as its structure decays. The beautiful blue of indigo is in contact with all of us when we wear jeans and is thus embedded in American culture. Rust describes decay. Each of these colors requires a unique dyeing process, requiring time and knowledge. Early in the Master of Fine Arts degree program, Aaron came to the realization that she could only bring this history to visual form through her experience as a white woman. Looking at the history of lynching with documented evidence that individual white women were the cause of those lynchings is one voice. Looking at white women who used their lives to fight discrimination is the alternate voice. Bringing community into this research and creative work, Aaron began workshops using embroidery to explore images of these abolitionists. She has used her research to isolate imagery of these abolitionists that she prints onto fabric and offers to the group. Discussing the history of each woman they are honoring has encouraged each participant to research their subject further. The interviews Aaron conducted have revealed observations that you can find as a part of this exhibition. Continuing workshops will eventually yield enough embellished images of women to construct an alternate side for the quilt displayed here. The quilt-making process of solo construction of a “top” and group completion of the quilt through stitching is a historical ritual in the American Midwest. We are witnessing a quilt created by an artist who is actively gathering a community to learn about and embellish portraits that will complete the other side. Unlike the bulk of quilts that have a top and a backing, this quilt will have the side you see here, created by an individual artist as a vision of hope and the other side, completed by communities who meet together to embellish portraits that honor and learn from abolitionists. When this quilt is complete, many people will be connected through this object, creating a community of individuals, each working to contribute to racial equity.
(above) The Legacy Quilt, Side A, 2023, antique quilt top, indigo-dyed Damask, eco-dyed silk organza, hand embroidery, 11’ x 9’ (front cover) detail of The Legacy Quilt, Side A
The Legacy Quilt Project by Aaron McMullin
Quilts embrace us. They are gifts made for loved ones, passed down from generation to generation. They are often made from scraps of fabric worn over a lifetime, replete with memories. They span cultures and histories. Quilts are also gifts to the quilter - a gift of quiet meditation, each stitch a moment of peace and connection with self and source. Stitches are like words strung together, composing a love letter. Close your eyes. Imagine writing a letter to your dearest love. When you call them to mind, can you feel your love for them envelop you? Is there any room for fear or sadness? The heart of this quilt top (quite literally) is very likely over 100 years old. I found it in a cabinet in the SIUE textiles studio while clearing out forgotten materials. I reached for the folded-up fabric as soon as it caught my eye. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. At the time, the idea to create a quilt was just sprouting. Several months later, I pulled the quilt top from a shelf in my studio and unfolded it. It was enormous and, to my surprise and delight, was in the shape of a heart. Many of the pieces were worn thin, torn, and threadbare. As I looked more closely, I realized it was entirely hand-sewn. In one or two places, traces of batting clung to stitches that had been added later to repair tears. Every couple of inches, I could see a pair of holes indicating that the top, batting, and bottom had been tied together - a quick and simple way to complete the quilting process. If you look closely, maybe you can find the two pieces of pink yarn that remain. I asked a friend who is well-versed in the history of fabrics how old she thought the quilt top was. She said the fabric was probably from the mid-1800s to early 1900s. My mind raced, and goosebumps rippled across my arms. These cotton scraps were probably made from cotton grown and picked by enslaved people or sharecroppers. I lay the heart out, taking in its history, imagining all the hands that had already touched this treasure. In the spring of 2022, I enrolled in Finding Freedom’s online program, White Women Taking on Our Own White Supremacy. I had been studying the role Carolyn Bryant played in Emmett Till’s lynching, and a friend had told me that the facilitators of this program addressed Carolyn Bryant specifically through the lens of class and gender. What I didn’t know was that another part of their curriculum was the story of Jessie Daniel Ames. Ames was born in Texas in 1883. She founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. In addition to securing over 40,000 signatures of white Southern women on its ‘Pledge Against Lynching,’ ASWPL members traveled to towns throughout the South where whites had perpetrated lynchings of Black people. They organized local women to pressure their local law enforcement to do their duty and prevent extrajudicial killings. Of course, Ames and the ASWPL had their shortcomings, but I was impressed that they had the courage to travel throughout the South, in the heart of some of the most violent and racist communities, to fight to end lynchings.
(left) Artist Aaron McMullin and antique quilt top, Legacy Quilt, Side A in progress. (photo credit: Kate Brockmeyer) (right) Participants select portraits of abolitionists to embroider at the first Legacy Quilt Project workshop. (photo credit: Kate Brockmeyer)
I began to wonder, who are the other white women like Jessie Daniel Ames? Why had I never learned about her despite being engaged in racial equity work for a decade? I began to research white women abolitionists and activists. I was astonished by how many incredibly courageous women had been integral in ending slavery and fighting for equal rights for all. I wanted to share these stories. After a workshop with artist Luanne Rimel, where we learned how to print images on fabric and embellish them with embroidery, things began to click. I could print portraits of these women and invite folks to choose a portrait to work with. I envisioned us gathering together to stitch and talk, sharing the stories of these women’s powerful legacies with each other. As I developed the concept, my energy and excitement grew exponentially.
From left to right: Clarina Howard Nichols by Lora McMullin, Mary White Ovington by Jordan Geiger, Frances Seward by Ana Sumner
I had already been growing a group of white women who wanted to be part of a community art project about whiteness. Several of us had been meeting monthly and were along for the wild ride of my own conceptual development of the project. They were instrumental in helping me understand how to engage folks who don’t necessarily have confidence in their artistic abilities and in helping me grow my confidence as a creative facilitator. I began to see how my intuitive strength was a skill I could use for myself and share with others. The creative process requires a surrender to intuition. Resmaa Menaken writes in My Grandmother’s Hands: The body, not the thinking brain, is where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, and joy, and where we process most of what happens to us. It is also where we do most of our healing, including our emotional and psychological healing. And it is where we experience resilience and a sense of flow.1 Inspired by this, I began to piece together how using art to strengthen our intuition facilitates healing and progress in racial equity work. The portraits you see above were created by participants of the first two Legacy Quilt Project workshops. I will assemble these portraits to compose one side of the quilt. To hear a brief conversation I had with each participant about their experience and the legacies of the women in their artwork, you can visit www.aaronrosestudio.com/ LQParticipants. I encourage you to explore these interviews. While I guided participants through their projects, I was working on the other side of the quilt. From the very beginning, I had envisioned incorporating a sycamore tree. I had fallen deeply in love with these trees during a time in my life when I was dealing with multiple taxing traumas. Their bare white branches gleamed in the sunlight. They are the first trees to catch the morning sun and the last trees to say goodnight to the day’s light. They stand out in the forest, their white branches bending and stretching majestically. I learned that they are native to the Eastern North American states and live to be three to four hundred years old. My heart beamed as I thought about our elder sycamores and how they have witnessed these histories play out in our country.
Installation view of Lying Ladies, Child Within, and Deadly False Accusations, 2023.
As I worked with the heart of the quilt, I surrendered to my own intuition and the guidance of all the ancestors whose legacies we were honoring. Nearly all the materials in this quilt had lives before this one. The indigo squares and flowers surrounding the heart were once white Damask tablecloths and linens. Some of them were napkins that belonged to my great-grandmother. I dipped them in indigo, gently massaging the dye into the fiber. I recalled learning about the spiritual significance of indigo from Aboubakar Fofana, a multidisciplinary Malian artist. “Fofana’s work stems from a profound spiritual belief that nature is divine and that through respecting this divinity we can understand the immense and sacred universe.”2
Airing Our Dirty Laundry Like the Legacy Quilt Project, the rust-dyed series Airing Our Dirty Laundry is an outgrowth of my experience in the fall of 2021, when I visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is dedicated to victims of racial terror lynchings. I was deeply disturbed to learn that so many of the lynchings were acts of vengeance for anything from the alleged rape of white women to accidentally brushing a woman as they passed on the street. One plaque at the memorial reads, “David Walker, his wife, and their four children were lynched in Hickman, Kentucky, in 1908 after Mr. Walker was accused of using inappropriate language with a white woman.” While I wasn’t shocked that so many of these instances were connected to white women, I was deeply disturbed at how many of them were also connected to young white girls. White women and girls played a central role as accusers and thus instigators of lynchings. In the lynchings committed in reaction to rape accusations, white adolescent girls accounted for more than half of the accusers. Even when rape accusations were disproved or directly contradicted, the white women and girls responsible for the claims “suffered neither social stigma nor criminal prosecution” for their role in instigating the murders of innocent Black men and boys. Socializing girls in such an amoral framework communicated a devaluation of Black life and inflicted psychological damage on them.3
After taking the Finding Freedom workshop in 2022, I began to create works that addressed the implications of white women and girls in the history of lynching in the South. For the series Airing Our Dirty Laundry, I dyed a child’s apron, a nightgown, and a slip— all made of white cotton—with rust. This process symbolizes the impurity, neglect, and carelessness embedded in the choice white women and girls made to falsely accuse Black men and boys of sexual assault and the choice of white-dominant culture to keep those stories buried in the past. Of the more than 4,000 recorded racial terror lynchings, roughly 1,000 were the result of these false accusations. On the waistband of the child’s apron, I embroidered, “Sexual assault accusations resulted in nearly 25% of Racial Terror Lying Ladies (detail), 2023, vintage nightgown, rust, acetone transfer, Lynchings in the South. Over half of the approximately 64” x 24” x 24” accusers were white adolescent girls.” The nightgown has printed signatures and portraits of women who falsely accused Black men of sexually assaulting them. The slip is dyed with rust around a small white circle representing a womb or inner child. Each garment has also been coated with rabbit-skin glue, which causes the garments to retain the mannequin’s shape after removing it, leaving the illusion of an invisible person wearing them. The slip has been molded to represent a pregnant woman, speaking to the impact of a mother on her child from embryo to adolescence. Child Within represents the communication between a mother and child that begins early in the womb. How can a mother influence her child to love or hate someone? Whether or not a woman ever bears children, I believe that our inner child lies intact within each of us, regardless of sex or gender. I believe a part of us remains intact from before any sort of human influence, and within that piece of ourselves lies the truth of humanity and our interconnectedness.
Lying Ladies (detail), 2023, vintage nightgown, rust, acetone transfer, approximately 64” x 24” x 24”
To Cynthia, From Willie (detail), 2023, vintage girls’ apron, valentine, 32” x 15”
To Cynthia, From Willie is based on the story of 15-year-old Willie James Howard and Cynthia Goff. During Christmas 1943, Willie Howard sent cards to all of his co-workers at the Van Priest Dime Store in Live Oak, Florida. Unlike the other cards, Willie’s card to Cynthia Goff, a white store employee, revealed a youthful crush. His greeting expressed hope that white people would someday like Black people and concluded: “I love your name. I love your voice. For a S.H. [sweetheart] you are my choice.” After reading the card, Cynthia’s father, Phil Goff, brought two friends to the Howard home and demanded to see Willie. Despite his mother’s pleading, the men dragged Willie away, and then kidnapped Willie’s father, James Howard, from work. The men drove the two Howards to the embankment of the Suwanee River, bound Willie’s hands and feet, stood him at the edge of the water, and told him to either jump or be shot. Willie jumped into the cold water below and drowned while his father was forced to watch at gunpoint. Willie’s dead body was pulled from the river the next day. Goff and his accomplices later admitted to the local sheriff that they took Willie to the river to punish him, but claimed the teen had become hysterical and jumped into the water unprovoked at the thought of being whipped by his father. Fearful for his own life and the other members of his family, James Howard signed a statement supporting Goff’s account. He and his family fled Live Oak three days later, and then shared the story of Willie’s lynching.4 In this specific instance, we do not know whether Cynthia told her father about the card she had been given or whether he found it and demanded that she explain what had happened. In many of these instances, the brutal lynchings were caused by the racism of a girl’s parents and family members. I chose not to rust this apron to represent the innocence behind an incident like this and to leave us to imagine the impact that the horrifically violent murder of Willie may have had on Cynthia. Each of these pieces represents an aspect of the roles that women and girls played in this racial terror violence, but they do not represent the prevalence with which these crimes took place. To convey the pervasiveness of these deadly false accusations, I have created a collage of archival newspaper clippings that tell the hundreds of stories of these racial terror lynchings enacted in the name of “protecting” white women and girls. These newspapers represent all the known racial terror lynchings associated with white women or girls in Mississippi, Florida, and some of the cases from Georgia. I did not have room to include the remaining cases from Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina.5
Cultural Cleansing On a trip to North Carolina in 2022, I discovered a Confederate battle flag in an antique shop. I immediately felt uncomfortable. I questioned whether to buy it to use in some future artwork. I hated the idea of owning it. I decided to circle back to the flag when I was ready to leave the shop. Ultimately, I realized that if I didn’t buy it, the flag could wind up framed and hanging over a mantel in someone’s home or flown on a flagpole somewhere. I thought that I could buy it and decommission it permanently. The shopkeeper rang up my items and, with a smile, remarked that the flag was a good find and I was lucky. When I got home, I unfolded the flag and placed a huge chunk of selenite on top of it. Earlier that year, when I was in New Mexico, I visited the site of a selenite Cultural Cleansing, 2023, Confederate battle flag, selenite crystals, crystal deposit that is over 250 million years 3.5” x 35” x 23” old. The company that stewards this mine allows the public to take crystals from their discard pile. Many people believe selenite crystals are a powerful energetic cleanser. Energy, negative or positive, cannot be trapped in the crystals due to their translucent nature. Initially, I was just clearing the energy of the flag because I did not want that hateful ideology present in my home. As I looked at it, I realized that this was the artwork – arranging the selenite crystals over the confederate flag symbol.
Rosie’s Sewing Machine Rosie Chappell co-founded the first wave of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan in the mid1860s. She led white women in sewing the Klan outfits for their husbands. I shook my head in disbelief when I read this. Of course the men of the KKK were not sewing their own outfits! I found this rusty Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine in Wildfruit Projects’ backyard days after reading about Rosie Chappell. The Connecticut based sewing machine manufacturer was founded in 1853 and was bought out by Singer in 1905, which means that this sewing machine is somewhere between 118-170 years old. When I had learned about white women sewing the KKK outfits, I immediately envisioned a white piece of fabric being fed into a rusty sewing machine and turning to rust, as if Rosie Chappell possessed not the Midas touch but the Rust touch.
Rosie’s Sewing Machine, 2023, found Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine, bedsheet, 42” x 56” x 50”
The Legacy of White Supremacy, 2020. Sewn upcycled white lace dress, photo transfers, soil from a Montgomery, AL cotton field, approximately 72” x 42” x 36”
Which Legacy Will We Carry On? I created The Legacy of White Supremacy at the end of my first semester at SIUE. At the hem of the skirt, I carefully transferred sepia-toned portraits of cotton farmers holding cotton in front of their faces. They become more and more transparent as they ascend the skirt, eventually fading, so all we see is white lace. Although I had made the dress to fit me, I had not inserted myself into my artwork in a forward way. I told myself that I was trying to remain objective. Looking back, I think I was intimidated to put myself in front of an audience and to be so obviously connected to work addressing such a fraught topic as white privilege. At the end of my first year at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, I experienced strong pushback to my work. Several white people disapproved of the artwork I had shown them, though it was unclear exactly what about the work was problematic. It was my first lesson in discerning between the discomfort of white viewers and the innate nature of my artwork. I learned that even if I am not explicitly in the artwork, as the artist, I am still the target at which white viewers aim their discomfort. It is easier to be upset with the artist than to sit in discomfort and investigate one’s privileges. It is one thing to have a conversation with someone and to be able to respond to critical feedback. It is quite another thing to create work that stands alone without being able to respond directly to critiques. That was a conversation the viewer had without me, and it was terrifying to imagine the potential criticisms. In a world where cancel culture and call-out culture are so dominant, I was afraid to be vulnerable in such a public way. I began considering whether placing myself in my artwork might disarm white viewers. Just as I have learned to speak from my own experience when discussing race, I wondered if I might need to place myself in the artwork for white viewers to experience the artwork with fewer defenses, recognizing that I include myself in the discourse of white privilege and racial justice. It felt natural to use the dress to experiment with this. What would happen if I quite literally put myself in my artwork? The short film Shrouded in Whiteness (2021) was the outcome of this exploration and another important artwork that sprung from my trip to Montgomery.
I was deep into the Legacy Quilt Project before I realized it was the second major artwork I had created in my MFA program with the word “legacy” in the title. With our current climate crisis, the question of legacy has become more commonplace. As we watch the horrific evidence of the so-called state of Israel inflicting genocide on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, I have seen the question “What will you tell your children when they ask you what you did?” making the rounds on social media. It is another way of asking, “What will your legacy be?” I have thought of the women of the Legacy Quilt Project often over the last couple of months, wondering how they would respond to the inhumane violence unfolding before us. Lillian E. Smith, one of the first women I learned about, self-identified as an artist and activist. I immediately grew a strong affinity towards her. She wrote the essay, The Right Way Is Not A Moderate Way, to be read on her behalf at the Institute on Non-Violence and Social Change sponsored by the Montgomery Improvement Association, December 5, 1956. Smith wrote:
There is the extreme of hate, yes; but there is also the extreme of love.... The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?6 Within each of us, we all have rusty elements and soothing indigo blues. When we open our eyes to our history, we can make an informed choice when asking ourselves, “What legacy will I carry on?”It is equally important that we know the stories of the Carolyn Bryants and the stories of the Lillian Smiths. The former are cautionary tales - lessons never to repeat but to learn from. The latter can buoy us in times of grief and despair. They serve as a reminder that we are not alone. We stand on the shoulders of courageous women who defied social norms in the name of human rights for all. I choose to be an extremist of love. My creativity and compassion are my tools of choice. I commit to continuing to examine myself and my privileges and to work for an equitable world where all are free. Will you join me?
Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful for the support I have received throughout my MFA program. Without the gentle wisdom, patience, and unwavering trust of my advisor, Laura Strand, this accomplishment would not have been possible. Thank you, Laura. To my mama, Lora McMullin, who basically became my studio assistant this fall, thank you. It is so special to me that this quilt is a labor of love from us both. Daddy, thank you for making sure I had delicious dinners to eat and for helping print these beautiful catalogs and invitations. Thank you to my dear friend and mentor, Dail Chambers, for encouraging me to pursue both my art and healing practices, for being an incredible accountability partner, and for giving me invaluable feedback about my artwork and the Legacy Quilt Project. Thank you to my thesis committee Jayashree George, Rachel Bradley, and Abbey Hepner for your insight and support. Thank you to Kentaro Kumanomido and Nate Lucena of Wildfruit Projects for taking a risk and allowing me to exhibit my artwork at their gallery, knowing how controversial this content can be. I am grateful for your insight, patience, courage, and support. Last, but certainly not least, Ivy Cooper, thank you for your generous feedback and support in writing both this catalog and my thesis.
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Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2017. 2 https://www.aboubakarfofana.com/about 3 Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (3d Ed., 2017). 4 https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/2 5 https://americanlynchingdata.com/explore.html 6 Smith, Lillian. “The Right Way Is Not A Moderate Way.” Phylon (1940-1956) 17, no. 4 (1956): 335–41. 1
Artist’s Bio Aaron McMullin is an artist, healer, and caregiver based in the St. Louis area, the ancestral lands stewarded by the Osage Nation, Missouria, Illinois Confederacy, and many other tribes who were forcibly removed. As a beneficiary of that removal, she strives to honor them as she lives, heals, and creates. Aaron received her Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 2009. This Exhibition fulfills the requirements of the Master of Fine Arts Degree from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Aaron has worked as a community arts organizer and teaching artist with organizations like CAM St. Louis, Artscope, and the Regional Arts Commission. In 2011, Aaron received a Fulbright-Nehru Research Grant and a Critical Language Enhancement Award to study cotton farming in India. She served as a contributing editor for the book Invisible Hands: Human Rights and the Global Economy, published in 2014. She was awarded a Community Social Impact Grant (2014) and Artist Support Grants (2015, 2019) from the Regional Arts Commission. In 2020, she received a Competitive Graduate photo credit: Natcha Wongchanglaw Award from SIUE. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, her artwork won awards in photography, textiles, and printmaking at the annual juried student exhibition at SIUE. She was the 2023 Emily Pierce Graduate Student Residency Award recipient at the Lillian E. Smith Center in Clayton, GA. Aaron was a 2023 Surface Design Association Outstanding Student Awardee. She was one of three awardees selected to have their work included in the SDA 2023 fall magazine. My choice to pursue an MFA stemmed from my desire to make artwork that thoughtfully and clearly addresses issues of race and whiteness by using cotton. I knew this would require lots of practice and feedback. “Legacies of (in)humanity” is the culmination of three years of deeply intentional exploration. The work in this exhibition reflects my understanding that white artists must make artwork that reflects our lived experience. It is radical, as in the Latin meaning “root.” True healing comes from treating the wound. We must look at the wounds of our past, go deep within ourselves, and open to healing our present and future. Racial equity healing is an ongoing process. While I have put great thought into this exhibition, I recognize that as a white-bodied cis-gendered queer woman, my biases create blindspots. Healing is hard, painful work. It requires addressing wounds. I am genuinely committed to healing and welcome critical conversations. The last several years have brought me back to the heart of racial equity work - healing myself. I leave with the question, “How I can radiate this healing beyond myself, outward into my communities.” This exhibition is just the beginning.
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All artwork images copyright Aaron McMullin Unless indicated otherwise, all images of artwork are courtesy of the artist. Unless indicated otherwise, photo credit Aaron McMullin