Last October, The Mint Museum in Charlotte opened Foragers , a monumental installation spanning four stories and covering more than 3,700 square feet in its atrium’s 96 windows at the Uptown museum campus. Devised and created by Brooklyn-based visual artist Summer Wheat, the work is intended to empower women and challenge traditional perspectives of women’s roles and positions in society. Each vividly colored, hand-cut vinyl panel, designed to mimic the effects of stained glass, was created as a puzzle piece to the overall collaged work, and powerfully weaves a story of women laboring, foraging, and toiling, together.
The immersive experience in wandering and viewing Foragers is colorful, full of movement, and one that sparks a range of emotions due to the sheer magnitude of the installation—perhaps Wheat’s way of expressing the magnitude of women’s place in the world.
“In so many ways, Foragers is a monumental tribute to all those anonymous female makers and laborers who have made North Carolina the place that it is today: the Catawba clay workers, the Cherokee basket makers, the enslaved and freed African-American fishers and farmers, the countless woodworkers, weavers, and quilters,” says Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD, the Mint’s chief curator and curator of contemporary art.
A great deal of Wheat’s inspiration comes from historical contexts, including Egyptian hieroglyphics and religious iconography (think of stained glass windows in churches). Wheat regularly swaps women in places where men typically are—a swap that signifies her refute of gender-specific representations in art, as a way to highlight the heroic but often invisible work of women. The four-story windows in the Mint’s grand-scale atrium presented Wheat with a unique opportunity to make these anonymous women figures grandiose, purposeful, and significant—ultimately transforming the space and sharing an important message: women matter, and continue to serve a critical, prodigious role.
On view through 2022
The Mint Museum Uptown
