Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know

Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know turns the humble truce flag of Appomattox—a white linen dishcloth carried by a Confederate horseman in 1865—into a powerful lens for historical reckoning. With 60 colour illustrations across 112 pages, Sonya Clark re‑weaves the narrative around this overlooked artefact, exploring how cloth can become a catalyst for reconciliation rather than division. The book documents her monumental installation recreating the flag at ten times its original scale, her workshop-led interventions and activist performances, and the symbolic reversal of Confederate iconography through cloth, voice and shared labour.

This is not merely a visual record but a guided journey through material activism. Clark seamlessly blends archival reflection, process documentation and strong theoretical framing (with texts by Valerie Cassel Oliver and W. Fitzhugh Brundage), inviting the reader to consider textile as testimony. The sewn threads become threads of memory: binding together notions of race, nation, healing and the roles symbols play in shaping collective consciousness.

About the Author
Sonya Clark (b.1967, Washington DC) is an Afro‑Caribbean American artist, Professor of Art and the History of Art at Amherst College, and former Chair in Craft and Material Studies at VCU. She is best known for her socially engaged fibre-based works—such as hair‑based portraiture, comb mosaics, participatory “Unraveling” performances and Monumental Cloth installations—that interrogate race, identity, memory and protest through the visceral language of cloth, combs, flags and hair.

Publication date: 2020
Publisher: The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Pages: 112
ISBN: 9780998701868