Invitation, Violence and (Re)Imagination in “The Communion of White Dresses”
The Mint Museum’s exhibition “The Communion of White Dresses” represents a collaboration between North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green and mixed media artist Monique Luck (“Communion” [mintmuseum.org]). It incorporates an amalgam of artworks, from Luck’s collages to donated wedding dresses to the written, danced and spoken words of Green’s eponymous poem. To me, the exhibition reflects the intersection between racism and femininity through the cultural motif of the white dress. It invites its audience to consider their personal associations with white dress culture and compels them to realize its inherent violence.
As I tiptoed through the exhibit’s stark white walls, my impression of its artwork shifted from delight to almost-physical pain to haunted solemnity. I could see that engaging with white dress culture inspired intense personal and emotional responses: for example, viewers’ comments, written on a wall alongside the lace and picture frames, expressed reactions ranging from pain to righteous anger to joy. “Asked to write [the] storyteller’s story, people have given their own,” I scribbled in my notes. By honoring individual voices, especially the Black and female voices directly affected by the white dress motif, Green and Luck’s exhibit not only provides space for personal reflection but also elevates that reflection as part of its artwork.
Like the personal responses on the wall, the discriminations Green and Luck address also seem ingrained in their artwork. Green’s writing reflects recognizable historical instances of racism, from “a slaver’s whip” to “a 1968 Klan burning,” and Luck’s accompanying artwork bears similar historical undertones, including “for sale” advertisements and the faces of Green’s allegorical “unraveling of crows” (Green). Even the dresses arrayed down the middle of the room resemble the hanging tombstones of the “Lynching Memorial” (“National;” Smith). These parallels forced me to examine each dress as not only a celebration of a special occasion, but also a testament to the violence impacting its owner. The “communal wails” behind the gauze and lace felt increasingly tangible with each artwork—textile or otherwise—that I viewed (Green). “I think I’m leaving different,” I wrote as I stumbled out the door. To me, the exhibit successfully brings the complicated, painful intersections between white dresses’ joyful and oppressive connotations “to life.”
However, while I believe my newly informed, emotional response reflects some of Green and Luck’s intentions for their work, it does not actualize their full goals. Ultimately, “Communion”’s introductory plaque explains, the exhibit stands “ready to…[manifest] the Afrofuture through art,” seeking not only to highlight the past but also to shape the future. As I compare my own impression to those I saw around me, I have to wonder whether, as I scrawled in my notes, “[i]s everyone here feeling—this?” The exhibit reframed my view of white dresses and, more broadly, the intersection of racism and femininity. To me, therefore, other attendees’ cheerful curiosity and excitement felt incongruent with the gravity of the space. I found myself recalling Anna Deavere Smith’s reflection that her audience’s personal perspectives shape their reactions to her work (Green and Smith). If the audience of “Communion” did not reimagine the future as the artists intended, I wondered, could their work truly succeed?
Yet as I reconsider my definition of success in art, I become increasingly convinced that the reactions I witnessed do not detract from “Communion”’s impact. Perhaps, I consider, the fact that those viewers bore witness to the artwork matters more than my judgment of their reactions. Perhaps “Communion”’s existence in our world—other viewers’, the artists’ and mine—is enough for the exhibit to accomplish its goal: not a radical revision of the everyday world, as I originally assumed, but the seemingly simple reimagination of a cultural motif. Viewed as future-shaping by its very presence, “The Communion of White Dresses” goes beyond reanimating history and inviting personal perspective. With a subtlety to match the lacy oppression it illuminates, it imagines a future where voices concealed in “hushed seams of white linen” might be boldly danced, spoken or even written on the walls, bringing that future one step closer to reality (Green).
Works Consulted
The Communion of White Dresses. 4 September- 7 October 2024, The Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte.
“The Communion of White Dresses.” Mint Museum, 2024, https://www.mintmuseum.org/exhibition/the-communion-of-white-dresses/.
Green, Jaki Shelton. “The Communion of White Dresses.” Prairie Schooner, vol. 93 no. 4, 2019, p. 18-20. Project MUSE, dx.doi.org/10.1353/psg.2019.0105.
Green, Sharon and Smith, Anna Deavere. Structured conversation. 5 September 2024, Hance Auditorium, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.
“The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.” Legacy Sites, Equal Justice Initiative, 2024, https://legacysites.eji.org/about/memorial/.
Smith, Anna Deavere. Lecture and performance by Anna Deavere Smith, Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement, 04 September 2024, Duke Family Performance Hall, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.
