Self Evident (for Sally Hemings), a sculpture by Tori Ellison, explores American diversity through a dress. The sculpture holds the family tree of the enslaved Hemings, her half-sister Martha Wayles Skelton and Sally’s master President Thomas Jefferson. Hemings and Skelton had the same white father. Jefferson married Martha and took Sally as a household slave.

After Martha’s death, intimacies between Hemings and Jefferson produced pregnancies. Hemings made Jefferson promise their children would be freed at age 21.

Self Evident drew on Ellison’s studies of slaves’ dresses in Jefferson’s Monticello estate. Inglewood City Council proclaimed April 16, 2016 as Sally Hemings Day.

Victoria (Tori) Ellison is a visual artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and prints. Her art is in public, private and corporate collections. She has exhibited widely and presented solo exhibits across the United States. Ellison won fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop and Virginia Center for the Arts. A noted arts writer, she has articles published in LA Weekly and Seattle Times, and others news outlets, and edited publications for the Guggenheim Foundation and Philadelphia Museum of Art. She had an Inglewood studio during the project and now resides in Washington, D.C.

Date: 2015
Collection: City of Inglewood Permanent Public Art Projects
Medium: Sculpture
Material: Patinaed bronze with incised texts
Size: 40″ x 20″ x 10″

Location:
Inglewood Public Library, 2nd Floor
1 West Manchester Boulevard
Inglewood, California 90301