"DAYCLEAN" a multimedia installation

This exhibition currently mounted at Redline Gallery in Milwaukee honors the memory and integrity of 67 plus black men who were executed by hanging in the summer of 1822. They were accused of planning an insurrection against slave owners in the city of Charleston under the direction of Denmark Vesey, a free black man who purchased his freedom with his lottery winnings 20 years earlier. Vesey could have taken up offers to return to Africa (Liberia) but chose to remain in Charleston to fight for the freedom of his wives and children and other enslaved Africans. Six of his most committed and trusted cohorts were hung with him on July 2, 1822 after arrested, tried and found guilty. I continue to work on a conceptual way to keep their memory alive. In the DayClean installation, I hung glass bottles from the ceiling. It was my intention to hang 67 but ran out of space. I also constructed a bottle tree as they are common in rural parts of the low country and probably throughout. Bottles are placed on the dead branches of trees upside down to catch bad spirits or energy before they enter the home. This is a common practice said to have come over with Africans from the Congo. DAYCLEAN means first light or sunrise. It is from the Gullah Vernacular. When someone remarks that they went to work before day... they will usually say they left at day clean. I loved the word upon hearing it and thought when I first stood in the Old County Jail house located downtown Charleston, of the time of day these men (who were detained and tried there) must have been executed. I later learned that they were hung in the early morning, so I called the installation DAYCLEAN.