I have been collecting Confederate commemorative plates since 2016, prompted by the rise in open white supremacist pride in contemporary culture. When I stumbled across my first set of plates in a tiny junk shop it felt like a call to action: I immediately envisioned using the porcelain-cutting techniques I have mastered to grind out these symbols of oppression.  I edit each plate by extracting the Confederate symbols, leaving only the American landscape between the voids. The dust from each removal is harvested and displayed below its plate of origin to show that history cannot be erased; there is still a residue and the dust remains. It wasn’t until I began this work that I learned that I have ancestors that fought and died for the Confederacy. Learning this about my lineage changed how I regarded this body of work. What began as a critique, became a palpable reckoning.

I imagine these objects as Trojan horses hanging innocently among family photos. These plates were manufactured long after the Civil War with romantic illustrations, and created for people to hang in their homes, to pass dangerous values down to future generations aided by collectable marketing and packaging. Speeches like Douglass' spoken over a century ago illustrate how little has changed and remind us not to settle for symbolic gestures of progress, there is still mighty work ahead. 

See also: The Great Enemy of Truth and a Mightier Work is Ahead