Online exhibitions are a convenient and modern media platform. By visiting online exhibition platforms, the viewer can enjoy a multitude of conceptual works by artists from all over the world at once. One such exhibition is “Tatter, Bristle and Mend” by creator Sonya Clark. This exhibition showcases all the artist’s work from her art career. The central themes in Clark’s work are heritage, labor, language, and visibility (National Museum of Woman in the Art). Sonya Clark is an artist working with textiles, hair, and other materials. She does not exhibit her work live, being a multimedia author. The primary purpose of her work is to increase the visibility of black people in world history. The artist’s earlier works are mostly made using stitched pieces and beads, while her more recent works use sugar and neon colors. Materials for Clark’s work also include hair, combs, typewriters, currency, and beads. In the works in the exhibition Tatter, Bristle, and Mend, a great deal of emphasis is placed on hair and wigs.
Sonya Clark’s work also includes various symbolic headdresses, symbolizing the divine power located on the head. Another distinctive feature of this exhibition’s work is the replacement of parts of ordinary objects with items made of hair. For example, the replacement of the buttons of a vintage typewriter with balls of hair speaks to the presence of black people in the field of creative writing. One of my favorite pieces in this exhibition was the “wedding rings” sculpture. Instead of the traditional gemstone, the gold rings have sugar cubes embedded in them. Clark wanted to show the close connection between the slave trade and the sugar. For me, this sculpture shows, first and foremost, the slave trade blinded, for whom sugar had become more precious than diamonds and the human lives of enslaved people.
Work Cited
“Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle and Mend”. National Museum of Woman in the Art, n.d., Web.