Date: June 18, 2025
On September 6th VTS will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the Reparations Memorial. It is our intention that this memorial will serve as a site of remembrance, contemplation, and healing. The selected site, in Trotter Bowl along Quaker Lane, allows it to be visible and accessible by the surrounding Alexandria community.
The artists working on this beautiful tribute are Washington, DC natives and work as a mother-daughter duo by the names of Martha Jackson-Jarvis and Njena Surae Jarvis of Jackson-Jarvis Studio. Martha Jackson-Jarvis has been an important figure in Black women’s art histories. Her work is often site-specific and draws on the natural and cultural history of African Americans in the US. My personal favorite is her 1997 installation Rice, Rattlesnakes, and Rainwater; an installation she created in Charleston, SC that evokes aspects of Lowcountry-Sea Island traditions and culture. It was installed on the lawn of St. Luke’s Reformed Episcopal Church, a landmark site amongst Black, working-class communities in Charleston. Her daughter, Njena has been creating a name and space in history for herself as an artist familiar with a range of materials and genres like sculpture and performance art. Similarly, she is also interested in notions of identity, legacy, and the things we inherit.
Black feminist art historian, Lisa Gail Collins, once said that Martha Jackson-Jarvis’ work “reveals that the search for a cultural past can make visible routes to the future.” We are honored to be working with the Jackson-Jarvis Studio for this project and hope that this visible route to the future is one of true justice and healing.
Amoni Thompson-Jones