Reliquary For Strange Fruit

Summary:
This installation addresses one of the more disturbing aspects of the violence against Black people—the taking and keeping of souvenirs. Members of lynch mobs would fight over, sell, and purchase keepsakes—cuttings of the rope and wood from the lynching tree, ashes of burned bodies, pieces of their clothing, and even body parts (fingers, toes, ears, teeth, lips, hair, genitalia), including slices of organs for cooking and eating. This horrifying practice was not something the perpetrators tried to hide. Instead, it was such a festive occasion that they included their children and documented it. There are newspaper articles with eyewitness accounts describing the grotesque fanfare, advertisements of the tokens for sale, and lynching postcards with photographic evidence sold, shared, and distributed through the U.S. postal service. The inscription on one postcard from a son to his parents reads, “This is the barbecue that we had last night.” Because there were nearly 5,000 lynchings (documented) during the 80 years between 1817–1968, there were countless souvenirs taken and saved. Today, there are containers in attics and basements with tokens of Black death. How do the spirits of those tortured souls rest when pieces of their bodies are still tucked away and being passed down in white families? Short of collecting every remnant and giving them their proper rites, how can they be given honor? This installation is an offering to all those souls, named and unnamed—a last rite for restoring those spirits to wholeness and a visual prayer that they rest in peace.

This collection of era-specific containers holds relics of lynching souvenirs in effigy: a photo of a thousand-plus lynch mob, a rope segment, vintage cloth, ashes, soil (from Fruitvale BART Station, where Oscar Grant met a similar fate), hair, dogwood tree sticks (a famed lynching tree), fingers, toes, ears, and teeth. The containers and body parts have a golden anointing to consecrate them. Inscriptions on the shelves read, “You are precious,” as a reclamation and a simple psalm to offer the spirits. As a whole, this reliquary (a place to keep spiritual objects) lets the martyrs tell their stories and uses art as a spiritual ritual.