Full Circle: Decay, Dread, and Déjà vu after Wedgwood (2019)
The idea for the exhibition Full Circle began with my encounter with a ceramic object--the Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion--during the height of Black Lives Matter activism. I was struck by the similarities between that 1784 object and contemporary protest: both the demand to be recognized as persons but also the way the “hands up don’t shoot” gesture reflected the kneeling pose on the medallion. As I dug deeper into the history of the medallion and Josiah Wedgwood himself, I ended up back in the Enlightenment, with its utopian views of equality and reason, while simultaneously codifying and institutionalizing white supremacy.
This installation, presented in conjunction with the 2019 NCECA conference in Minneapolis, grew into the beginnings of a museum period room, centered not on Wedgwood, but his contemporary and possible ancestor of mine, Gijsbert van Engelenhoven.
