On view now in HCCC’s Main Gallery, Zak Foster’s SILVER DOLLAR (2024) draws on the form of the fan quilt, a traditional patchwork pattern in which wedge-shaped pieces of fabric radiate outward like the ribs of a handheld fan. The style first emerged amid a growing fascination with Japanese art and design following the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and regained popularity during the Great Depression, when quilters made work with readily available materials such as feed sacks and fabric scraps.
Here, Zak adapts the fan’s branching geometry into a genealogical diagram that traces relationships between wealth, race, and educational opportunity across generations. Radiating fields of pink and blue map Zak’s own family history: the pink cloth identifies Foster’s slaveholding matrilineal ancestors, while lighter blue sections indicate family members who received higher education.
This visual mapping reveals a clear correlation between slaveholding and access to higher education, tracing how wealth, opportunity, and social status generated through slavery were transmitted across generations. The composition also exposes stark disparities within Zak’s lineage: while members of his maternal family accumulated wealth through slaveholding, his paternal ancestors lived as subsistence farmers and did not gain access to higher education until many generations later.
Part of Foster’s “Southern White Amnesia” (2021–ongoing) series, proceeds from sold works support a scholarship for descendants of formerly enslaved people, extending Zak’s personal reckoning into a material form of reparative action. His quilt positions the silver dollar not simply as currency, but as an object through which wealth, privilege, and their histories pass from one generation to the next.
