NOT NEVER MORE

We inhabit our histories. We feel the pains of the past, we clang in its echoes, feel its residue caked up on our skin. History’s traumas have been perpetually erected in monuments, embedded in street names, stone walled in woodlands, hung, stacked, and plastered in architecture. Not Never More is my gut reaction and visual response to confronting such an architecture—the problematic 19th century French wallpaper Les Vues d’Amérique du Nord (The Views of North America), created in 1834 by Jean-Julien Deltil. This wallpaper adorns the foyer and staircase of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, which is situated in the historic Nightingale-Brown House. Deltil’s wallpaper obfuscates colonialism, genocide, capitalism, and slavery, in its romanticized idyllic nostalgic imagery. My response, Not Never More, is a textile print/quilt installation that remixes, conceals, reveals, and warps this historically fraught and imperialist imagery into layers of possibility, braggadocio, pessimism, blunt historical moments of shame/ contradiction, dance, and critical optimism.—Jazzmen Lee-Johnson

*Not Never More: View of Niagara Falls*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, adorned with blue glass shells, appliqué of First Nation, Indigenous, and Native peoples of what is today called Niagara Falls, patchwork “you are on native land.” Photographed by Erik Gould.

(detail) *Not Never More: View of Niagara Falls*

*Not Never More: View of Natural Bridge*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, patchwork of some First Nation, Indigenous, and Native peoples of what is today called Virginia. Photographed by Erik Gould

(detail) *Not Never More: View of Natural Bridge*

*Not Never More: View of New York from New Jersey*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, patchwork of some First Nation, Indigenous, and Native peoples of what is today called New York, beadwork adornment. Photographed by Erik Gould.

(detail) *Not Never More: View of New York from New Jersey*

*Not Never More: View of Boston Harbor*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, patchwork of some First Nation, Indigenous, and Native peoples of what is today called New York, gold chain and mirror adornments. Photographed by Erik Gould.

(detail) *Not Never More: View of Boston Harbor*

*Not Never More: View of West Point Military Academy*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, patchwork of names of First Nation, Indigenous, and Native peoples of western regions such as Arizona where West Point aided in colonists efforts of westward expansion. Photographed by Erik Gould.

(detail of bison) *Not Never More: View of West Point Military Academy*

(details) Not Never More: View of West Point Military Academy

*Not Never More: View of Boston Harbor (land repeat)*
Screen print on voile sheer textile, quilted border, patchwork of some names of First Nations, Indigenous, and Native peoples of what many refer to today as Massachusetts, gold chain and copper adornments. Photographed by Erik Gould.

(detail patchwork) *Not Never More: View of Boston Harbor (land repeat)*

Install of NOT NEVER MORE atop “Les Vues d'Amérique du Nord” wallpaper at the NightingaIe-Brown House, home to the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University.

Install photos by Nick Dentamaro