William Still Triptych takes inspiration from Journal C of Station No. 2 of the Underground Railroad (1852–57) accounting for enslaved persons who escaped the American South to Philadelphia, assisted by abolitionist William Still (1821–1902). The prints are a meditation upon the experience of a long transformative passage of self-emancipation, a journey across terra incognita that people undertook against all odds. Painter recreates Still’s handwritten entries to form the eccentric paths of a deep map that varies chromatically and emotionally across the triptych. The artist captures the journal’s records of newly chosen names, accompanied by the acknowledgment that they had “arrived,” a word repeated incessantly throughout, as a vast magnitude remade themselves free people while dealing the repressive regime a blow.
William Still Triptych
