… “it made me wonder how many other Southern white folks were walking around assuming they would know if some of their wealth and privilege had been inherited in past generations from the exploitation of the labor of black folks.” — Zak Foster
Southern White Amnesia
A Southern Artist's Reckoning with a Family History of Slavery
"Family Bed" from Zak Foster's "Southern White Amnesia" collection on display at Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery
Kate Savage: My guest today is Zak Foster. Zak is a community-taught artist whose work draws on Southern textile traditions and repurposed fabrics. He practices an approach to design that is based in narrative and guided by intuition. He's especially drawn to preserving the stories of quilts and explores stories we tell ourselves about the past, present, and future. His exhibition, Southern White Amnesia, at the Morlan Gallery until the 20th of February, examines the family stories about white Americans and how they pass down through generations, or are allowed to be forgotten, their role in slavery and its ongoing legacy. An amazing exhibition. Zak, I enjoyed looking at your work very much, but tell us how you got to actually do this project. What inspired you?
Zak Foster: Thank you so much, Kate. I have long been the family historian in my family. And at first it started about like, who are the famous people I'm related to? That's something people like to know, right? But about five to seven years into that research, I began to uncover documentation that my ancestors may have enslaved people. And I took that to one of my family members. I said, did we ever, is this true, did we ever enslave folks? And right there that night sitting in the kitchen, they said, no, real fast. And there was a pause. “I think we would know,” they said. And that pause, and that “I think we would know,” cracked open this entire project for me because it made me wonder how many other Southern white folks were walking around assuming they would know if some of their wealth and privilege had been inherited in past generations from the exploitation of the labor of black folks. And so that's how we got started. Here we are.
Kate: And why have you chosen fabric to work in?
Zak: Fabric is such a magic medium. You know, as an artist, I dabbled in a lot of different things, but it wasn't until I hit fabric that I found my landing place. And I think it has something to do with the familiarity of the material. I mean, almost all of us wear clothes for most of our existence, right? We wrap ourselves in this material. You can't say that about any other material out there. You can't say that about glass or plastic or paint or graphite, right? So we have this automatic inherent connection, and that connection, I believe, that familiarity, helps us feel a certain sense of comfort with the object made out of fabric. It helps us because that comfort may lower our guard a little bit. And as an artist, I like to use that response as an opening, to maybe stick in a tougher, more challenging question. With our guards down, I think we can be a little more open to examine some of these things that really need examining urgently nowadays.
Zak Foster with "Like Family"
Kate: After you came to the realization that your family, in fact, had enslaved people in your past, where did you go to do the research that has provided the inspiration behind these works?
Zak: Shout out to Ancestry. They have done an incredible amount of work to digitize a bunch of archives. I've also been to a lot of local libraries. I have walked around a lot of old cemeteries. I've visited the churches of my great-grandfather, who was a pastor in upcountry South Carolina. So it's a mix of modern digital resources and also just doing the footwork it takes to go to these places and see these records, hold these records with your own hands.
Kate: So you actually did have to tell your family and break it to them that there were enslaved people in your family past.
Zak: Absolutely. And for the most part, I found them to be very open about it. Some of them ask more questions than others, and I think that's just the way it is. We're all at different points in our journey, and we're all interested and compelled to examine different things. I do find it to have been a very instructive exploration for me, because I feel like my family is, one could say, the quintessential...white colonialist Eastern American experience, right? So you got my mom's side of the family, where there's a long line of slavery. There's also a long line of access to higher education. On my dad's side of the family, there was no slavery. There were folks who were just trying to get by, subsistence farmers. My dad was a first-generation college student. And so both of those branches meet together in me and in my life. And so I feel I can speak with a good degree of authority of what it means to have been in this place for 400 some years, how my family got their foothold in this place, and what that might mean moving forward into the future.
"Silver Dollar" - Zak Foster
Kate: You talk about the fact that the past isn't finished with us yet and reference the need to maybe atone. Do you see yourself as an activist through your artwork?
Zak: Hmm. I mean, yeah, “activist” makes a really nice shorthand doesn't it? I think what I'm trying to do is, I have zero interest in shame guilt. I don't think those are good motivators for us in the long term. They might get a quick win, perhaps. What I'm interested in is revealing the connections that have always been here. My family will forever be intertwined with the lives of the people that they enslaved in the past. So by showing these connections, my next question then for folks looking at the work is, if we are connected, how do we take care of one another? Family looks after family after all, right? And so if family needs help, what are the resources I have to be able to provide that help? And I think that's where I'd like the viewer to walk away from the exhibit asking themselves, what can I do to make this world the just place that we know it can be, the more loving place and the more kind place that we know it can be.
Kate: Your works in the show are more installation pieces, wall hangings, and actually 3D pieces. I have a favorite. I very much like“The Great Aunt Dicey,” which is a fun piece. People need to go and see the work for themselves. It's at the Morlan Gallery until the 20th of February, so lots of time to go. Do you have a favorite piece to maybe send us in that direction as well?
Zak: I love “Great Aunt Dicey”, a marionette puppet of my great, great, great aunt. One of my favorite pieces, though, one that is iconic, I would call “Silver Dollar.” It's a family tree about how the inherited wealth of my ancestors got me into college. And it really demystifies the concept of privilege for folks.
Kate: Thank you so much, Zach.
Zak: Thank you, Kate.
Transylvania's Creative Intelligence Series will host a lecture by Zak Foster February 12, 6pm, Carrick Theater.
Zak Foster, creator of "Southern White Amnesia"