Lost and Found, 2023
calico, ink, wood, embroidery thread, burlap, and pokeberry ink
Photographs by Jordana Rubenstein-Edberg
Each lost and found poem is excavated from the text of fugitive slave ads published in Montgomery County, MD. The text from these documents is ruptured and reconstructed into a love poem, dedicated to the person the original document targeted. The names of each self-liberating ancestor can be found on suspended pieces of burlap and calico. They include Anne Maria Weems, Rachel Davis, Caroline Landick, Jess and Josemin, Daniel Jackson, Peter Reader, Colin Brooks, Joe Carroll, Tobias Martin, and Davy. The Black poem references a slave insurrection that took place a few miles north of Rockville, MD in 1845. The ancestors involved in that armed resistance include Manuel Beall, Carbell, Jesse Dodson, Lemon, Ferdinand, James, Samuel, David, David, James, Mark, Jas. Gray, Lewis Key, and Henry. The insurrection was led by Mark Caesar and William Wheeler.