The installation Bearing Witness is comprised of A Distant Sight, Ritual Vessel and Sentinels with the text “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” (Eli Wiesel).
Sentinels, (2019), 4 ceramic vessels with photolithographic imagery from the 2018 Wallace Homecoming (Isaac Nunn, photographer) and family photographs, fired-on decals, china paint, gold luster. Each vessel is 17” x 7” x 7”.
Sentinels
The images on these cylinders include those from the 2018 homecoming of Black and white Wallaces, along with Wallace ancestors and iron oxide kudzu leaves. The script around the cylinder tops reveal Gottlieb’s hopes and thoughts as she grapples with her legacy.
A Distant Sight (2019), raku tile with fired-on decal of Cotton Hoers, Mississippi (Dorothea Lange, photographer, 1937) mounted inside a found kudzu basket torched with map gas, 24:”x 19” x 15.5”
A Distant Sight
Nestled within and under torched kudzu, Dorothea Lange’s Cotton Hoers, Mississippi evokes the concealment and suppression of enslavement the artist is exploring.
Ritual Vessel (2019), black clay with crushed brick made by people enslaved at the Wallace plantation resting on broken brick from plantation, 22” x 22” x 18”.
Ritual Vessel
Brick made by enslaved workers for the Wallace House chimneys is used as the base for a vessel made of black clay with crushed brick. Gottlieb has added her own hand to those of the brick makers, collapsing time.