"unknown, unknown" draws from archival research informing the design of the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia that opened in 2020. The installation explores the archival absence and erasure of approximately 4,000 unknown and known community members who built, worked, and maintained the university from 1817 to 1865. In contrast to the West’s typical stone or bronze monument form that uses figures, names, and dates to compose timeless historical narratives, "unknown, unknown" constructs an ephemeral sonic, visual, and haptic memorial of this enslaved community.
The immersive installation acknowledges the vast scope of racial violence that made Black men, women, and children less than human to become property owned, rented, and sold by the academical village’s residents. By forming a counter archive of imagery and sounds, “unknown, unknown” re-humanizes this community by rendering their unknowability into moments of refuge and spaces of liberation.
The two-sided multi-channel video and audio projection is captured on suspended sheets of muslin, a cotton fabric that recalls the domestic labor by Black women at UVA and the spaces where they lived and worked. The fabric panels are conceived not only as a projection surface, but an articulated textile that begins to expand on the narrative created within its mnemonic space.The front faces of the panels are torn strips of fabric that are resown as an act of repair and reparation. On their opposing face, the fabrics are pleated and subtly stitched along diagonals—alluding to the unseen domestic labor of seamstresses and laundresses. The handmade tactility and material nature of the suspended fabric panels transforms an ordinary cloth into a memorialized artifact.
