Important changes of plan concerning ‘a Tale of Charleston/for Reparations’! It all started after I had decided to iron the material Saleha brought back from Algeria for me. A 10 foot length of white tulle, covered with pale, delicate, pastel flowers, the size of an Oreo cookie, attached with a simple stitch where the pistil is. Very festive and in full contrast with the cold, formal ‘chamber’ which is part of the Sedan Chair piece. Even before the trip to France, I had been planning on using this flowery material as the ridiculous version of a theater curtain, cute and silly, to mock the heavy-handed decorum of the chamber. But something was stopping me. Cute and silly as it was the curtain was still limited to its literal and limited function of separating, hiding, closing, covering, or decorating. It would have been the only element in the whole installation for which I had not successfully attached a metaphorical meaning to enlighten the purpose of the actual story being told here.

Months ago, I had found images of eighteen century play and opera stage sets. They consisted of successive props representing trees and foliage on either side of the stage, whose purpose was to create a sense of depth and direct the focus on a far away halo of daylight, in otherwise crepuscular surroundings. I understood their meaning to also  relate to the Enlightenment era. Still low tech but an obvious sense of nature and the powerful presence of light at the end of a tunnel of tree branches trimmed by some topiary artist. It also related to the period of the American revolution when the Constitution was written and gave birth to a nation of law and order, symbolized by a severe neoclassical architecture, inside and out. Therefore the formalism and temple-like chosen for the interior room of the Sedan chair…

I could go on and on deciphering the sense behind each of my sculptural choices in the Tale. I suppose this arcane messaging could explain the time it has been taking me altogether to be sure the story thread does not get lost or distracted. And all this without the support of one single word, as I had promised myself to do the day Morgan dismissed the work we were doing together for being CONCEPTUAL!  This was in 2021 or so.