Whitfeld Lovell, Whispers from the Walls, exterior installation view, 1999; courtesy the artist  

When the past comes back to haunt us, we can close our minds—or delve deeper. Whitfield Lovell not only faces his ghosts head-on but encourages viewers to do likewise.

          —Janet Kutner, art critic, Dallas Morning News

Whispers from the Walls is a poignant and highly evocative installation piece that mixes found objects, photographs, wall drawings, and sound to create a sensory experience of African American life in the South in the 1920s. The centerpiece of the installation is a one-room shack surrounded by a profusion of tattered clothing. The inside of the house is filled with personal effects and life-size charcoal drawings of human figures, whose haunting, silent imminence speaks to us in whispers, not shouts.

Lovell uses layers of sensory experience, from the scents of musty fabric, a half-filled decanter of whiskey, and fresh flowers in a vase, to the sounds of a 1920s blues tune. Whispers from the Walls effectively makes the viewer feel at once like an intruder in the present and a visitor to the past.

Whispers from the Walls is made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.