re.riddle presents, Cash Crops, an online exhibition of new work by Cheryl Derricotte that will run from November 1-30, 2021. This exhibition is the part of re.flect, a program series that spotlights one of the gallery's artists each month. The rotating monthly series offers in-depth access into the respective processes and practices of our global community of artists. In addition, the artists have partnered with re.riddle to release unique works at special prices. These exclusive pieces will only be available during the month of the related exhibition.

Curatorial Statement

Cash Crops is a new series of work by Cheryl Derricotte that considers the six major American agricultural crops that motivated the transatlantic slave trade from the 1600’s to the 1800’s – tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, rice, coffee and wheat – and the enduring role they play in today’s world. Derricotte portrays the same set of cash crops from two different mediums, glass and paper, resulting in two viscerally divergent and conceptually-rich vantage points. Derricotte’s research-based practice stems from her singular guiding question, “how did we get here?” and the incisive observations of urban landscapes, environmental concerns and socio-political dynamics that follow. By resurfacing historical images and stories that relate to our present reality, her artwork activates public dialogue, heightens our awareness and provides a brave space to open a conversation we might otherwise avoid. “In the [art-viewing] setting,” Derricotte observes, “it is not easy to look away… after all, that’s what we came for, right?

The history of American cash cropping is considered a parallel account of our nation’s economic might and racial inequity. Cash crops were instrumental in building the American economy despite being excruciatingly labor-intensive to produce. Soon after the first African captives were brought to the American colonies in 1619, the plantation market resituated itself around enslavement as the most cost-effective, renewable source of labor. When the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in 1807, over twelve million Africans had been transported to the New World to fuel its economic rise. To what extent does the architectural foundation of our country’s economy have to do with our present-day status quo? In this case specifically, what effect does a reconsideration of cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, or coffee have on our paradigm of racial inequity? Capitalist market and consumer behaviors? 

While Derricotte’s glass and paperworks are visually pleasing with a delicate depth of pattern and material, their recontextualization within her related histories pushes the viewer through the threshold of their beauty and into the shadows of a more painful confrontation. The translucent quality of Derricotte’s glassworks enhances the feeling of a past and present vastness and acts as a window into a centuries-long topic regarding our country’s economy and crop fields (Field series). Moreover, she embellishes vintage images of individual plants with hand-embroidery accents, simultaneously underlining their delicate beauty and contentious by-hand labor history (Plant series). This duet of present and past, the collective and the individual sets up the conversation around the life, effects and symbolism of cash crops in the United States.