Fred Wilson, Artist

Slit , 1995

Fred Wilson discovered the figurine pictured in this photograph at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in a stored box of dolls that were broken, damaged, or considered to be no longer appropriate for the museum's program. He singled out the image of the figurine—originally exhibited by Wilson with twenty other photographs in a family tree–like arrangement (a lineage of racism and amnesia)—and enlarged it to reveal a crack along the figure's neck, a symbolic and chance embodiment of the violent effects of history.