Looking Back is the first piece in the Interiors project. It combines disparate found materials and imagery to create a new perspective for the viewer through a window onto an explosion. The embroidered text, “Don’t be so sentimental” speaks back to the viewer, as if a message from the other side. By bringing together the text with imagery sourced out of her personal family archive, Rushing can begin to have a conversation with her forebears that starts to address their legacy as white Southerners. This relationship to place among the living family is extended thorough the photograph, taken by Rushing’s great grandfather during his time working in Saudi Arabia for an oil company in the 1950s. The violent act of demolition of the landscape comes sharply into focus as it calls to mind similar acts of violence and resulting mushroom clouds of the 40s, wars of the 60s and 70s, up through the politically-driven crises of war and colonialism still being performed to this day. Looking Back is a personal attempt to reconcile a legacy of cultural violence with the desire to acknowledge and grow beyond the past.

Looking Back
Found window, image from family archive, fabric, embroidery, light 2021