The maps speak to a range of different topics such as: slavery and racism, indigenous sovereignty (calling land back), social justice / oppression and voting rights. This wall interrogates the United States as a site, and expresses how our country embodies tensions within the context of race in different specific regions.
Amos also printed directly on top of other symbols of the US, the early confederate flag from the 1860’s and the Constitution of the United States.
In his artist’s book Riddle Ma Riddle, Kennedy also explores the Black linguistic traditions of the enslaved, but instead of concentrating on the written power of slave pamphlets, he focuses on spoken language—specifically, the dialect and riddles of the Gullah (also called the Geechee) people, the descendants of those brought to work the cotton plantations of the Sea Islands. Of this project, Kennedy says: “There’s a strong history of riddles in West Africa. It is part of the culture. There is even a riddle without a real answer—the whole point instead was to provoke discussion. In the ’20s and ’30s, the WPA7 went out collecting folklore and recorded some of the Geechee riddles brought over from Africa, and later I printed them in Riddle Ma Riddle, a book with a folded structure that was supposed to be playful, like a riddle itself”
