Freed is an installation/intervention I created for the exhibition “History is Rarely Black or White”, at the Agnes Etherington Centre in 2021. The show, curated by Jason Cyrus, positioned the museum’s collection of historic cotton garments in the context of the history of slavery in the southern United States. I created a curtain of hanging cotton bolls, some of which had been stuffed with human hair, to encircle one of the cotton dresses. The intention was that viewers would be unable to view the dress without also confronting the dark history that produced it. It is now part of the museum’s permanent collection, and has subsequently been shown at the Burnaby Art Gallery as part of my solo exhibition there in 2022, using a similar dress from the Burnaby Village Museum’s collection.