Making legacy visible through Critical Historical Mending

by Jaime Chao Mignano | 10 May 2021

In our 6th through 12th grade curriculum, teachers are guiding students through complex historical conversations that range from Belgian colonialism in the Congo to the “Jim Crow” policies of the American South. This is really all in a day’s work for history classes. We show students a lot of powerful images that claim to represent history—objectively and with narrative clarity—as if history were ever so straightforward.

These designed, carefully composed representations of history, whether they are maps, portraits, or cultural systems, are made objects or artifacts. They show the decisions and values of particular makers. Recognition of the JusticexDesign pedagogical principle Design is not neutral and the Voice and Choice protocol guide us into a questioning stance with these artifacts. What is the narrative that is being told or reinforced by this thing? What has it been designed to show us? Like Voice and Choice, we begin the Voice, Choice and Mending protocol by looking closely at the artifact—the Make—and exploring the complexity of the maker’s choices and the voices present.

In history we also have the tools of counter-stories, the narratives of those voices which we know to be historically contemporary and impacted by this system. Sure, we have read a lot about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but where were women, Native Americans, or enslaved African Americans at that hour? The work of historians has unearthed, validated, and collected these accounts, but they do not cast a shadow on the story of this artwork (Signing the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull). We can probe these relationships by asking: Whose voices are missing from this Make?

The next step in the protocol, Tracing the Break, is an extension of considering these contradictory narratives and the way in which their dilemma can stain the way we look at the Make. One student described it as “feeling wrong,” and I sometimes think of it as that bad taste in your mouth, or the flicker in your gut of a lie being told. It can be as subtle as minor discomfort or as jarring as a shocking revelation. We can sense a Break has happened, but we often feel it first. There is a conflict or a challenge that cries out to be confronted, and Titus Kaphar’s “historical amendment” is one artist’s approach to creating artworks that “wrestle with” that Break.

We find opportunities to address these contradictory narratives in the Voice, Choice, and Mending protocol by creating a Mend. I love to use Titus Kaphar’s artwork as an example of a Mend because he engages the thoughtfully selected Make with careful intentionality—as we hope our students will. He presents the Make with an open hand, making sure to choose a piece that is both a representation of a larger system and a cultural reference point. He finds an iconic piece and makes sure that the viewer will connect. And then he introduces a counter-story, evidence of a narrative that is contemporary to the Make and complicating. He juxtaposes these visual components in a unified composition that tells both their conflict and their relationship—he plays out their confrontation on the canvas. The result is a new whole, the story it tells now, a story of questioning. The viewer can engage with the Mend as with a debate, conscious of both sides and free to probe their points and counterpoints. One student reflected on a Mended monument, noting that this approach, “makes you ask questions, not just drive by it.”

Snapshots of classroom practice

JxD director Sheya and I co-developed the mending protocols thanks in great part to several educators' willingness to pilot them. We are particularly thankful to Nora Brennan and Lauren Wright at Washington International School (WIS) for exploring these ideas with their middle and high school students. The two snapshots of practice below share highlights of Critical Historical Mending from Nora and Lauren’s classrooms.

As part of a 10th grade History unit on the Reconstruction period of U.S. history, Nora Brennan wanted to connect students to modern debates on Confederate monuments. Students drew on their knowledge of the Civil War and Reconstruction to contextualize the construction of the Robert. E. Lee Memorial in Richmond, VA. Guided by the Voice, Choice, and Mender protocol, students examined Dustin Klein’s 2020 art installation Reclaiming the Monument, a light projection series that laid Klein’s pieces upon the Robert E. Lee Memorial—particularly the projection that featured Harriet Tubman.

Students shared that carefully considering Klein’s work as a Mender encouraged them to “reflect on the past and question [their] beliefs,” noting “ [this] artwork changes the meaning of the statue.” Reflecting on the responsibilities of public artworks that claim to represent history, students felt that they should “acknowledge any biases and make sure the history is truthful,” “represent history accurately,” and “accept if new discoveries disprove their claim on history.”

One student reflected, “This project has made me more aware of other voices. Now when I read a book I look at the person who is narrating and the person who is being observed, and how their interpretations of expressions and reactions are different.”

As an educator, and a citizen who cares about the civic space of memory and history, this is a shift that gives me hope and energy. I want my students, when learning about history, to choose the path of inquiry and authentic curiosity about the past, the story that we tell about it, and their own responsibility to be involved in how that story grows. And I want them to be sensitive to the designed nature of the made objects that carry those conversations forward, that can preserve them (often in spite of our best intentions) or can disrupt and revise them.

In speaking on the debate around the removal of Confederate Monuments, Kaphar says: “I think if we engage a new generation of contemporary artists to make new monuments that stand next to these old monuments and force those old monuments into a dialogue, I think we have an opportunity to create a new civic space around these monuments that can actually help us move towards the resolution of these years, these generations of racism that those old sculptures represent.” There is an urgency to enact ideas like this now, and I think a parallel demand: that young people, making sense of their civic life, want and need to be empowered, informed participants in the process of remaking the designed world as more creative, more curious, more just; reimagining a designed world that we can all belong in.