Sermon

Adkins’s Sermon series evokes the tradition of shrouding drums with black fabric to convey loss and memory. This bound instrument-sculpture, suggestive of muffled drums used in funeral processions to honor the deceased, expresses grief and mourning. Typically hung high on a wall and sometimes in multiples, artworks from this series often appear alongside a facsimile of the flag flown at the New York headquarters of the civil rights organization the NAACP whenever a lynching occurred. "A man was lynched yesterday," the flag declared, exposing racist brutality in America.