Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know

In the spring of 1865, a seemingly unremarkable dishcloth played a crucial role in ending the Civil War as the South’s flag of surrender at Appomattox. In Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know, textile and social practice artist Sonya Clark focuses specifically on this Confederate Flag of Truce, exploring the legacy of symbols and challenging the power of propaganda, erasures, and omissions. By making the Truce Flag – a cloth that brokered peace and represented the promise of reconciliation – into a monumental alternative to the infamous Confederate Battle Flag and its pervasive divisiveness, Clark instigates a role reversal and aims to correct a historical imbalance.

Published after Clark’s 2019 solo exhibition at FWM, Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know includes text by Valerie Cassel Oliver and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and a foreword by Susan L. Talbott, former Executive Director of FWM.