Shannon Hill

Post Civil War/Pre Civil Rights Pattern #10
silkscreen ink on cotton broadcloth
41 x 29 in.

Silence hides our nations sins. She wraps them gently in regret and shelters them from remembrance. She urges us forward on our paths and encourages us not to look back. She holds both reluctant onlooker and willing participant in a comforting embrace and carries them through time unknown. She tells us that in time the wounds will heal but in truth…Silence lies.

My work is an attempt to remember a time in American history when terror truly reigned and to honor those whose memory and existence have been dishonored by others whose hatred replaced reason and decency in a fetishistic frenzy for violence and souvenirs. The images I employ in my work have been reproduced to no end, first on postcards and hate literature and now in history books, web-sites, and as parts of educational programming (especially during the month of February). The more we see them the less impact they have. After awhile all the photographs look the same and the meaning becomes obscured. They almost become patterns in a sense. Something that represents something else. Something that mimics reality. Something barely visible.

© Shannon Hill