So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION
CURRY J. HACKETT
BORN 1990, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
ACTIVE WASHINGTON DC, AND NEW YORK, NEW YORK
WAYSIDE STUDIO
ESTABLISHED 2015, WASHINGTON, DC
Designer Curry J. Hackett constructs this world with dried tobacco leaves sourced near his family’s farmland in Prospect, Virginia. For the artist, the tobacco is “an unlikely celebration of an otherwise haunting crop. Tobacco is typically associated with enslaved labor or nicotine addiction, but my relationship to it is more nostalgic, since my family grew and sold it on land that they owned for generations.” Whether lair, nest, or refuge, this immersive space is punctuated by Hackett’s collection of what he calls “speculative objects,” including an embellished church fan, cast-iron skillets set amid rustling leaves, and collaged video channels. Hackett notes that his mother’s painting is the only object in the space that he has not remixed, imagined, or pulled from artificial intelligence. He says: “Everything else is my speculation on what life on that land was like or could be.” In this rendition of home, Hackett presents something that shifts between a memory, a near future, and an alternate history for Black people in the rural South, outside of our present time but somehow—through smell, sight, or touch—still within reach.
Visual Description
So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia is installed in a narrow gallery space at the end of the long main hallway which creates a more intimate experience and concentrates the sweet earthy smell from dried tobacco leaves that line three gallery walls from top to bottom. The leaves are long, brown, wrinkled and seemingly delicate and crunchy. The dried tobacco leaves are gathered into bundles, with leaves wrapped around the top end tying them together, which allows them to hang vertically. The bundles are packed closely together side by side, but a close look shows how they are suspended onto 6 rows of thin wire. Interspersed along the walls are what the artist Curry Hackett calls “speculative objects,” framed and embraced by the tobacco bundles that surround them.
Looking into the gallery from the entrance, on the right wall is a shelf in the same dark paint color as the walls of the room. The shelf holds three small mirrors with black frames positioned like a bay window with the outer mirrors turned inwards. A few feet down the wall towards the back of the room, is a digital jacquard tapestry, a few feet wide, nestled low on the bottom half of the wall. The piece is intricately, woven showing a realistic image of a Black woman wearing a headwrap making eye contact with the viewer as she peers from behind large green leaves – just as the tapestry peers from behind the dried tobacco leaves. On the right side of the back wall of the gallery is a shelf with a very small vintage boxy Sony Trinitron TV monitor. It plays a short video that blurs time and space as it flips from channel to channel showing scenes depicting fresh and dried tobacco leaves for sale, colorful textiles on a clothing line above a river, people inside a small church filled with colorful textiles, people watching stacks of TV monitors along a river, the artist Curry Hackett giving a news report in front of a field, and a jewel-encrusted farm vehicle, many with different show titles like “At The Table with Miss Ma” and “Over Yonder, The Game.” White text against blue reads “…so that you all won’t forget.” To the left of the video is a pointed arched window, recalling church architecture. Covering the window is a sheer cloth printed with a scene of a dark-skinned hand reaching from behind colorful patterned textiles with green grass and trees in the background. In front of the seemingly glowing cloth on the windowsill is a church fan with a wooden handle that rests at an angle on its side. On the flat fan is an image of several people in front of a church in the forest covered in a collage of bright and colorful patterns reminiscent of textiles. The church entrance is the same pointed arch shape as the window that the fan is displayed in.
Turning towards the wall to our left, still by the back of the gallery, we see a clearing in the tobacco leaves for five cast iron skillets. Two round pans hang on top. Underneath from left to right, there is a long vertical tray with molds of corn on the cob, followed by a round pan divided into eight triangular slices, followed by a rectangular muffin pan with round holes. Moving down the wall towards the entrance of the gallery is a mixed media painting by the designer Curry Hackett’s mother. The painting depicts a Black woman with short gray hair wearing a light blue dress and a white apron. She faces us while mixing a green bowl. The scene behind her is split into two sections. In the lower half she stands among tall grass and blooming plants with the horizon in the distance. In the top half of the background, to her right, is a table set with a pie and other offerings. These offerings sit just below a small crowd of people who we see from the back as they watch another Black person, wearing white, with their arms raised inside of an arched pointed window. The window seems to float among the blue, green, and orange of the sun setting over a landscape. To the left of the background seems to be farmland. In the farmland is a tree with large green leaves that hang above strawberries and a small structure with an orange roof in the distance. The painting has a border made of fabric squares quilted together. They are all sorts of different colors and designs, some are abstract and some are representational with patterns of chickens, corn, or nature.
Acknowledgements
Made in collaboration with Penny Stiff Hackett. Tobacco leaves sourced from Total Leaf Supply of Clarksville, Virginia. Video typography courtesy of Vocal Type.