Skip to content
Barbara Hosein
24/25
Barbara Hosein (barbarahosein.com) uses artist’s books, woodcut prints, papercuts, found object assemblages, weavings, rubbings and installations to explore her themes of connections, origins, destinies, remembrance, loss and reconciliation. She has shown her work in solo and group shows and in installations across the US and is a member of the “Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” Project. Her public art memorializing the 2011 collapse of the Indiana State Fair stage is on permanent display at IATSE Local 30.
Following the Battle of Malvern Hill in 1862 Confederate Camp Slave George Clark Self-Emancipates from the Family of the Artist, Changing his Name to George Washington and Enlisting in the Union Army | Handwoven cotton, silk ribbon, leather, text cut from inherited family documents telling the story of George (born a slave in Mississippi in 1843, died a free man in Connecticut in 1929), steel rod | 56” x 12”
“First the Fire, Then Deliverance, Forsaking Forever the Red Clay of Home | Handwoven cotton, silk, metallic rick rack, steel rod | 56” x 12”
“When I applied to RSA (Exodus 3) I thought it would be about answering a call. Our alternate text, “Go Down Moses,” spoke to me directly and I recognized my work would be about slavery, in particular about my maternal family’s experience as slave owners and descendants of slave owners, expressed in four generations of oral history and memoirs handed down to me. Most recurrent in the archive is the story of George, who made the journey from Mississippi to Virginia to serve as camp slave to my great-great uncle only to disappear after a fierce battle but then unexpectedly reappear a decade later to visit the family in Mississippi from his new home in Connecticut where he continued to live for 60 years. My work portrays the excitement of that moment of self-emancipation in a timeline of George’s life but also my realization through this course that the price of freedom is often exile.”
