Our Creative Director, Shaun Slifer, recently penned a blog post over at the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (where he’s a founding member) about his work this summer building out our newest exhibit in our Solidarity Gallery!
From the post:
Children of Mother Jones is built from a central narrative written by museum board member Emily Hilliard, author of the fantastic Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Hilliard’s interest and writing is focused on the way in which people in Appalachia build and maintain folklore, which she defines as “the art of everyday life–creative practices we learn by living our lives, passed informally from person-to-person rather than through formal training.” People often don’t talk about this kind of “making” when we’re doing it, and, particularly in movement work, the things we create are often a means to an end, existing largely in the moment. After that hot moment, more often than not, protest signs and other creations often simply cease to seem relevant. If someone doesn’t save this work or otherwise uplift it, we tend to move on, either continuing the fight in new ways, or getting on with other aspects of our lives. Working with memory and history involves bringing these objects back into focus and asserting the power that they hold. And yes, even memes from a Facebook group can be understood as meaningful expressions of struggle: laughter itself is an incredibly powerful tool!
all photos by Dylan Vidovich
