So We Don’t Forget Each Other (2022)

"So We Don’t Forget Each Other is a coat sewn by hand and made of found items from my studio and home, particularly quilt remnants, notions, and other bits from previous projects. 

The piece draws on several insights from my doctoral research on the late African-American fashion designer Patrick Kelly, whose famous pins are stitched into the coat, along with his words, “so we don’t forget each other”, which give the piece its title. Kelly’s pins were made from “pickaninny” dolls and although the origin of this word is a creole term for a small child, over time, it became widely used to refer to and caricature Black children. Kelly’s choice to use such a racialised object was political and subversive, especially considering that he often handed them out to anyone who was willing to accept one. He did this at fashion shows and department stores, too—a radical move as he was well aware of the racism that was a reality in his own life, but perhaps, not a reality to his clientele.

I believe that in gifting these pins, Kelly was also knowingly or unknowingly continuing the tradition, cultivated amongst abolitionists, of gifting jewellery—specifically medallions—in the hope that the symbolic image of a Black individual chained in chattel enslavement would turn the hearts of those on the fence about abolition. For me, Kelly’s refrain, 'so we don’t forget each other', is also a way of saying, 'I’m giving this to you in the hope that you care for it as something precious that I made for you and that you give that same care and consideration to the human beings that the little doll represents.'"

—Sequoia Barnes