Sonya Clark Presents American Truths through Textiles

Sonya Clark (BFA 1993) is an artistic investigator. Her most recent exhibition, Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia was reviewed in Hyperallergic and CNN and displays her inquiry into the history associated with the Confederate flag. Through her research, Clark encounters the Confederate flag of truce and reimagines it as a monumental textile, the largest woven cloth the Fabric Workshop has ever produced, at 15 feet by 30 feet, 10 times the original size. "If the original truce flag's modesty and size are at odds with its significance, Clark's enormous recreation transforms it into a monument. It's imposing, stately, and invites contemplation," reports CNN.

In the Hyperallergic article Clark questions the narrative of Confederacy and makes the Confederate flag of truce more visible, "What if we moved towards another symbol of the Confederacy?" By repositioning the original Confederate flag of truce, which was a repurposed dish towel used as a signal of the South's surrender, we gain a different meaning. She adds in the Hyperallergic article, "It's still a complicated flag, but a different kind of complicated, with a different kind of goal."