The works gathered here examine memory, whether personal, generational, or historical, through the lens of social and racial justice. Each piece reaches backward to events that still reverberate beneath the surface of the present. By attending to traces of memory with its wounds, gestures, absences, and inheritances we can open a path into the past that makes the present more legible.

These works invite us to consider how memory lingers and how the lessons we uncover can shape a future that refuses to repeat old harms. Artists include Humaira Abid, Al Doggett, Esther Ervin, Paul Rucker, Barbara Earl Thomas, and Preston Wadley.

Header image: Esther Ervin (Seattle), The Brooks, 2017, Wool yarn, beads, hand-dyed clothes pins on cotton fabric, Courtesy of the Artist