Sublime

ms22chancelor

Elaine Stevens

As its title suggests, Unnamed Figures not only illuminates Black appearances in the visual culture of this period but also asks how our encounters with them are shaped by the erasure of Blackness from art and archives.

I think it’s also important to admit, to attest to, and to [bear] witness to the violence of the archive of slavery, which is about erasure. There are tick marks instead of names; it’s all about the slave’s relationship to the accumulation of wealth for another. The archive doesn’t tell us the story of someone’s life.