CHARLESTON, S.C. — Below a full moon very early on a Tuesday morning 162 years in the past, Harriet Tubman, already sweating within the South Carolina late spring humidity, ready her troops to assault the Confederacy. Below the command of Union Colonel James Montgomery, she led a bunch of spies, scouts, and pilots, in addition to a volunteer contingent of 300 Black troopers and one Rhode Island artillery battery, up the decrease Combahee River, utilizing her eager information of astronomy, therapeutic vegetation, land, and waterways. She would change into the primary girl in United States historical past to helm a significant army operation, and the chief of the biggest and most profitable rise up of ensalved individuals within the historical past of the US.
Set up view of normal affidavit of Harriet Tubman referring to her declare for pension (c. 1898)
The exhibition pertains to that textual content by means of historic and artwork objects, together with however not restricted to Tubman’s affidavit declare for a pension, and early stereoscopic pictures of newly freed and enslaved peoples — coincidentally, an uncomfortable reminder that the early instruments of cinematography and American slavery are intently intertwined. The objects are in dialogue with environmental photographer J Henry Truthful’s beautiful photographs and video work of the willful, mysterious, and difficult terrain of South Carolina Lowcountry. These diagrammatic photographs are hung alongside work, quilts, and assemblages from the likes of Jacob Lawrence, Religion Ringgold, William H. Johnson, Stephen Cities, Kevin Pullen, and Aaron Douglas.
Upon getting into the gallery, we’re greeted by Religion Ringgold’s portrait of Tubman, “Coming to Jones Road Tanka #1, Harriet Tubman” (2010). Made in collaboration along with her mom, clothier Willie Posey Jones, within the Tibetan thangka custom, the painted hanging textile features as each a non secular information and meditative device. Tubman seems to be seated, centered amongst lush greenery upon a deep Naphthol Purple satin. The piece bears a quote from Tubman: “There’s one of two things I had a right to — liberty or death; if I could not have one I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”
Set up view of Religion Ringgold, “Coming to Jones Road Tanka #1, Harriet Tubman” (2010), acrylic on canvas
Stephen Cities’s “And I Shall Smite Thee” (2018) depicts a picture of a younger Tubman resting after an assault by an oppressor. Cities makes use of comparable materials histories as Ringgold to relate a narrative concerning the abolitionist; utilizing a dangling textile work, this time quilted, we see her on a riverbank. To her left, a crane — a marker of an ecologically wholesome wetland and a logo of bravery, spirituality, longevity, and even perceptiveness throughout many African nations and tribes — sits amongst the bushes, maybe symbolizing Tubman as a warrior whose rigorously non secular life guided her in her pursuit of freedom for enslaved individuals. Reverse, a beam of sunshine cuts throughout the purple beaded, prehistoric eye of an alligator, a reminder that ecological and man-made violence coexist with religiosity in a visualization of two giant parts of Tubman’s life.
The second gallery introduces us to our contemporaries by way of portraits by photographer J Henry Truthful, whose ancestors had been freed through the Raid, tracing a line from that early morning in 1863 to immediately. Pictured right here, amongst others, is Arthur Williams, whose great-great grandmother, Rebecca Simmons, escaped that evening. The portraits are paired with interviews accessible by way of headsets and QR codes, and hung perpendicular to Truthful’s pictures documenting land or instruments at nearer element. One {photograph} of cypresses rising from wetland, for example, is paired with a textual content reminding us that the Carolina rice fields had been as soon as treacherous cypress swamps that enslaved individuals cleared by hand.
Set up view of Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid, that includes a piece by Stephen Cities on the left
On the finish of the gallery, we’re greeted by three works: Kevin Pullen’s “Can you break a Harriet?” (2024), J Henry Truthful’s “Moonrise Over the Combahee River” (2022), and Aaron Douglas’s “Harriet Tubman” (1931) alongside the again wall of the gallery. The three works are a celebration of painterly colour. The greens, yellows, pinks, and lilacs of Pullen’s work are contrasted by the deep, deep indigo of Truthful’s “Moonrise” and complemented by the beautiful phthalo and viridian greens of Douglas’s “Tubman.” Pullen’s portray consists of myriad impressionistic, expressive, and energetic marks that make up the illustration of Tubman as a determine on the US 20-dollar invoice, evoking a stature she was by no means afforded in her lifetime. Truthful, in the meantime, paperwork the Combahee within the somber second between the fading of the day and the waking of nocturnal beings, whereas Douglas used his stylized palette of soppy earth tones and silver-blue grays to painting Tubman in a highlight, breaking the chains of bondage amongst myriad figures in a silhouetted wooded panorama.
What’s most profitable about this exhibition is how intently it approaches a visualization of the Raid in dialog with Fields-Black’s textual content. COMBEE presents information concerning the individuals, locations, financial system, and politics of 1863 in excruciating although never-dull element — rendered so richly and devastatingly human that we’re left in utter awe. The exhibition follows its design. That it’s proven in Charleston — and particularly on the Gibbes Museum, which was established in 1888 after the Civil Conflict had devastated town — makes it ever extra poignant. On this second, when the truth that our nation’s financial system was constructed and sustained on the labor of enslaved individuals is being erased, and museums throughout the nation are bowing to the pressures of the Trump administration, it feels revolutionary and revelatory to have fun the Black girl who freed almost 800 individuals in a single night.
These works, just like the present writ giant, deliver the historic determine into the realm of the human. What would Tubman consider herself on an American invoice, as Pullman’s portray suggests, after years spent battling for pension pay she by no means obtained? What was on her thoughts that fateful night of Might thirty first, 1863, as she and her troops approached the Combahee, and she or he ready a battalion of males to enter the marshes? Was she conscious that she was making historical past, or was she too preoccupied with the sunburn on her shoulders, the blisters at her heels, the ache in her again? My hope is that she had a good friend to wrap her drained toes, and some minutes to take a swim along with her, laughing within the moonlight.
Set up view of Kevin Pullen, “Can you break a Harriet?” (2024), acrylic on canvas
Set up view of Aaron Douglas, “Harriet Tubman” (no date)
Set up view of J Henry Truthful, “Minus Hamilton, Story of Liberation/Joshua Nicholls, Account of the Raid,” video reenactment of historic accounts by Ronald Daise and Roger Simpson
Conrad Munro Donner, “Loaded Barge” (c. 1892–1916), eeproduction from historic stereograph
Set up view of Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid
Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid continues on the Gibbes Museum of Artwork (135 Assembly Road, Charleston, South Carolina) by means of October 5. The exhibition was curated by Vanessa Thaxton-Ward.
