Short Film: The Power of Art for Reparative History
22 January 2025 – Tyler Jones
Something remarkable is happening in rural Alabama: a former plantation is being reimagined as a place for truth and reconciliation. But what’s most notable is who is behind it. A group of Black descendants of the formerly enslaved, and white descendants of the enslavers, have together formed the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation, a non-profit dedicated to reparative history through art. Their collaboration has the potential to serve as a national model for projects that leverage the power of art and experiential interpretation to help communities bear witness and contend with human experiences of the past.

Bearing Witness: Praise House – Sun Shadows by Tony M. Bingham, near Harpersville, Alabama. Photo courtesy of the author.
Many preserved antebellum homes in the South often enshrine the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” Yet the Wallace House–built in 1841 in Harpersville, 30 miles southeast of Birmingham–will not be redecorated or romanticized. Instead, the house and its grounds will serve as contemplative spaces for artists and historians to interrogate the legacies of white supremacy and to re-center the narratives of the site on the Black descendant community. In 2022, the inaugural site-specific sculpture, a work by artist Tony M. Bingham titled Bearing Witness: Praise House – Sun Shadows, was installed as a memorial to the local Black church. Bingham traced the history of local congregations to stories of enslaved people who met in “hush harbors,” small shelters which became sites of resistance during times of worship and self-expression. Bingham’s open-air sculpture is a deconstructed version of a traditional praise house; it features reclaimed materials and a steel-cut image of the nearby Scotts Grove Baptist Church that casts ethereal shadows between two freestanding walls.
Over the last year, my studio, 1504, completed documentation of this project through a short film that can be seen here. In observing Bingham’s practice, and how locals responded, I was curious to explore: How does one attempt to create art at sites where racial violence occurred? And more broadly, can art really be part of the communal healing process? For me, the project affirmed the idea that art has a unique, and perhaps essential, role in humanizing history, and it often does so in ways that can help us empathize with each other today.

Tony M. Bingham during production of “The Praise House” film by 1504. Photo courtesy of the author.
In a moment when our public discourse is highly fragmented, leaving little room for nuance, art can help open people up and encourage a more embodied encounter with history. It can also promote deep personal connections that allow us to reframe our own stories through the lens of interconnectedness. For example, Bingham’s praise house, which is sited on the edge of the property in order to move you physically away from the “big house,” invites an emotional experience and creates what some might consider sacred space.
When considering how art might be a tool for interpretation, it’s important to acknowledge its limits and its role as a complement to, not a replacement for, thorough historical analysis. Art alone cannot provide better healthcare or housing in rural Alabama. But I’m reminded of something said in my recent interview with Dr. Imani Perry, who often writes about her home state of Alabama and the intersection between public history, culture work, and art making: “We often minimize the significance of art in comparison to policy or law, but all of those decisions come through someone being moved to make them. And art is that which moves us and helps us understand what it means to be human.”
What better time and place to try connecting with a new generation around the importance of seeing history as the story of our shared humanity? I believe encountering that story can inspire real change — in Alabama and beyond.
~ Tyler Jones is the director of 1504, a narrative studio that integrates strategic communications with the visual arts and whose mission is to foster a more empathetic society through storytelling. His site-specific work explores the connections between people and places, including the Emmy-nominated project, In Solidarity: The Beth El Civil Rights Experience.
[Instagram Handle: @1504.co]