An Archive of Care: Reframing Our Understanding of Family, Place, and Identity is an exhibition by artist Robin North that examines how rural Black Southern families in Jackson County, Texas use visual art as a form of resistance and narrative reclamation, in relation to the region’s Freedom Colony histories and descendant communities. The exhibition challenges prevailing narratives about race, decolonizes knowledge production, and supports Black communities telling their own stories through participatory, collective methods.
An Archive of Care centers on the subtle ways visual imagery was used to counter dominant narratives across family life, land, labor, and community formation. Family photographs, handwritten records, land documents, and other artifacts hold encoded messages of survival, defiance, mutual aid, collective memory, and cultural pride meant for future generations. Read through the lens of Freedom Colonies, these materials also point to self-governed settlement practices, kin networks, and the building of community infrastructure such as churches, schools, and cemeteries as evidence of permanence and place-based claims. The archiving process is presented as an act of care that protects these records while extending the ancestors' resistance into the present. Through a human-centered design approach, North builds archives of care that preserve and share materials while keeping ownership and copyright with families and descendants. This methodology prioritizes accessibility, ethical collaboration, and the specific cultural contexts of rural communities.
