Increase of the Black Population in the United States
Starting from a simple bar chart, this visualization holds a lot of whimsy yet it is also undergirded with darkness. We use tiny pieces of rope that have been inked and pressed into the paper in place of the straight bars. Each length of rope is 1:1 with the bar chart lengths, however we have used the flexible properties of rope to twist and loop each length asking the viewer to unwind them visually. We consider the multitude of Black life in the wake of chattel slavery and their painful legacies in the 21st century while celebrating the diversity and dignity of Black life. When Du Bois exhibited his “data portraits” in the Negro Exhibition in 1900 most of the Western world thought that without slavery Black people in the U.S. would die out in a generation after Emancipation.