LAKE CITY, SC (WBTW)- Last week an art piece displayed at ArtFields in Lake City was creating controversy.
The piece depicts a member of the KKK holding a confederate flag standing beside the body of an African American hanging from a noose. The quilt caused some people in Lake City to boycott the art competition.
The piece was submitted by Loretta Gerald, an African-American artist from McClellanville.
“The man hanging on the cross could be a lady or a man, it doesn’t have hair. It could be black or white, but I used my heritage, my color. The man behind the cloak could be black because that’s what we do to ourselves, to each other, bring each other down, we kill each other and it could be white because of what they did to our ancestors with the castration and the hanging and the draggings,” artist Loretta Gerald said.
Gerald said last week she wanted the artwork to start an overdue conversation about racial tensions.
“I was going through a lot personally. This is personal trials and tribulations, having lost my mom and my dad and other dysfunction within my family and just really cast aside by my family and out this came bitter fruit racial crop,” said Gerald.
