Legacies of (in)humanity, an MFA thesis exhibit by local artist Aaron McMullin, is on display at Wildfruit Projects. The exhibition includes works that examine race and white supremacy by confronting the issues and highlighting those who fought against injustices. “The Legacy Quilt” is a community art project that a small group of committed women came together to embroidery and embellish portraits of white women activists that have been printed on cloth. The photos surround a large, quilted heart that McMullin was told dates back to the mid-1800s or early 1900s.
McMullin has always been interested in textiles. Before her MFA program at Southern Illinois University, she studied cotton farming in India. She talked to us about her current exhibit and what’s next in her work.
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You were an established artist before starting your MFA program. What did you learn in the process of completing this program?
I had gotten into a bit of a creative rut. I didn’t have a lot of ideas of other materials and processes I might be able to use to push my work forward. I was sort of at this turning point of understanding that I didn’t want to make art just because of the subject matter, but that art was the way I communicate my ideas to the world, and I have a lot more to say than just what’s going on in India with cotton farmers (Read more about McMullin’s past work here). I started to think about how I could relate to the anti-racism work I have been doing here in St. Louis and using my cotton lens to talk about race.
In my experience of doing anti-racism work and being engaged in different art communities, I knew that it wasn’t going to be an easy task and that I was going to have to give myself a lot of room to practice, so grad school was a place where I could learn new processes. I could access new materials and get feedback from a large group of people. I could also make work that I knew wasn’t necessarily going to go outside of those classroom walls.
How did you decide on the focus of your exhibition?
In the fall of my second year, I had a difficult review. I was not prepared for the backlash. My work is likely going to make white folks a bit uncomfortable, depending on where they are in their journey of understanding their whiteness. It was a major learning opportunity for me to understand that because of the nature of my work, I will be the target of that discomfort, and I had to learn how to discern between the viewers’ discomfort versus something that was innately problematic within the work itself. One of the things that I came away from that review with was up to that point, I had kept myself out of the artwork because I was trying to be objective. The whole review process told me I had to get away from this idea of objectivity because that’s not possible with my work.
I had created this lace dress, “The Legacy of White Supremacy,” with the cotton farmers around the bottom hem of the skirt. I took a video and performance class with the intent of creating a performance in that dress as the final project. I knew I wanted to be in a cotton field while I was wearing it, so I loaded the dress in the car and started driving to Memphis. On my way, I started thinking about how Montgomery isn’t that far and how I hadn’t really spent any time in the South.
I went all the way to Montgomery, and that was where all of my thesis work began. I went to the [National] Memorial for Peace and Justice and then to The Legacy Museum where I had four hours to take in 400 years of slavery and racism. It was incredibly powerful and overwhelming.
How did this inform your work on the Legacy Quilt Project?
What I was trying to figure out with my MFA was that sweet spot of art and activism and community organizing and creativity. I realized that racial equity is healing work on the individual and on a collective level, so I began thinking about how I want people to engage with my artwork. I felt isolated in doing the work in my MFA program because I didn’t have mentors within the art community who were on the same level of awareness of the issues, so I was seeking that community outside of SIUE by participating in anti-racism programs. I also decided that I wasn’t going to rush through the program in three years, so that allowed me to build a small, committed group of white women who helped me along as I came up with this concept for “The Legacy Quilt Project.” They were the first participants.
What’s next for your work?
I’m going to do more workshops with “The Legacy Quilt Project.” I want to figure out how to keep this project going. There are just so many possibilities for it.
To hear more from McMullins, head to Wildfruit Projects on January 6 for an Artist Talk. Or visit January 7 for the artist’s Legacy Quilt Project Workshop.
