This article was published in Panorama's Spring 2020 issue as part of an "In the Round" discussion of southern art titled: "Little of Artistic Merit?": The Art of the American South," edited by Naomi Slipp.

In the essay, I examine contemporary artist Jonathan Green's series, "Unenslaved: Rice Culture Paintings by Jonathan Green," completed in 2012 and 2013. The  Unenslaved series depicts what Green imagines rice cultivation and culture might have looked like if the African and African-descended people living and working on the landscape had not been kidnapped and enslaved, but instead lived in the coastal environment on their own volition. As such, I explore the ways in which the works challenge typical representations and conceptualizations of African American culture on and in the antebellum and contemporary Carolina Lowcountry landscape, and redress history through visual rejection.

Click here for the full article, available via Panorama.