Confederate, surrender, 2022
Mixografia print on handmade paper
43.75 x 23.25 x 0.75 in. (111.13 x 59.06 x 1.91 cm)
Edition of 30
Clar-1114-C
 

"Confederate, surrender" centers a seemingly ordinary object imbued with profound historical meaning: the white cotton tea towel used as the Confederate Flag of Truce at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Originally woven in Richmond, Virginia, the towel signaled the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s army and the collapse of a regime committed to preserving slavery. By reconstructing and amplifying this overlooked textile, Clark redirects attention away from the Confederate battle flag — long upheld as a symbol of white supremacy and racial violence — toward the modest domestic object that marked the Confederacy’s defeat.

Clark first encountered the folded truce flag while researching at the Smithsonian Institution in 2011. Displayed quietly alongside more celebrated national artifacts, the object struck her as historically significant yet largely absent from public memory. Reflecting on the experience, Clark questioned what it might mean if national attention had focused less on Confederate battle flag iconography and more on the moment of surrender itself. Through this work, she reframes surrender not as reconciliation between equal sides, but as the necessary dismantling of a system built upon racial brutality and Black enslavement.

As a domestic textile, a dish towel is an intimate object — handled, folded, and worn through repeated labor. In Clark’s dimensional print, the towel’s woven structure and material presence are carefully emphasized, transforming a utilitarian cloth into a charged historical artifact. Rather than erasing historical tension, Clark preserves it through tactile processes that insist on both material and historical memory. Her work functions as what she has described as an act of magnification: bringing visibility to an object and history that have remained largely overlooked.

Through "Confederate, surrender," Clark shifts national memory away from the glorification of Confederate imagery and toward the moment of the Confederacy’s collapse. The title itself serves as a direct command for confederates, insurrectionists, and white supremacists to surrender. In doing so, the work commemorates not only the fall of the Confederacy but also the ongoing and unfinished struggle for racial justice that began with emancipation and continues today.*

*Excerpted from the publication “Unfinished Republic: America at 250,” ISBN: 979-8-3507-6518-2, page 6.


This work was produced at the Mixografia print atelier. For three generations, the Remba family has shaped the field of printmaking and is recognized for developing and refining their innovative three-dimensional printing technique over more than 50 years. For the past 25 years, Goya Contemporary has worked alongside our print colleagues at Mixografia. As fellow members of the IFPDA—including service on its Board of Directors—we share a commitment to the highest standards of care, ethics, and connoisseurship in printmaking, as well as a mutual dedication to creating space for artistic vision. We are proud to represent these extraordinary prints, the histories they illuminate, and the spirit of collaboration they embody between artist, atelier, and gallery.