Sonya Clark: Declaration House 

Production | Exhibition Grant

Sonya Clark’s Declaration House is a public memory project situated at the historic site where Thomas Jefferson and enslaved valet Robert Hemings lived during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As the U.S. approaches the 250^th anniversary of this document, the project asks: “What do we do with the entangled legacies of freedom and enslavement at the core of our nation?”

At the Declaration House in Independence National Historical Park, Clark will install a multi-channel video installation in the windows of the building’s 2nd and 3rd floors featuring a series of blinking eyes looking outward from the façade; these animated eyes are drawn from the network of descendants of those enslaved by Jefferson at Monticello, including collateral descendants of Robert Hemings. The project seeks to decenter Jefferson from this history and expand our understanding of the story of the nation’s founding. Monument Lab will host a series of public programs with local artists and storytellers in collaboration with nearby cultural institutions and Monticello’s Getting Word Project. Through this project, Clark will make visible Hemings’s obscured life and legacy and offer a reckoning and reimaging of the country’s past, present, and future.