Renée Cox:

The Signing is my reimagining of Howard Chandler Christy’s iconic painting of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Rather than simply
parodying the original, I wanted to question who has historically been allowed to occupy the spaces where power, citizenship and
American identity are defined. By replacing the traditional Founding Fathers with a predominantly Black cast—women and men
presented as intellectuals, aristocrats, revolutionaries, eccentrics and cultural figures—I created an alternative ruling class. They aren’t
asking to be included in someone else’s history; they already belong in the room. The work asks a simple but fundamental question:
Who gets to define “We the People”?

Photographed at the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx, the architecture gives this imagined gathering the weight of an institution
while the elaborate costumes, wigs, African diasporic references and contemporary elements deliberately collapse past, present and
future. For me, The Signing is ultimately about sovereignty and the ability to imagine ourselves not at the margins of American history,
but as its authors. It is less a parody than a counter-history—using photography to reconsider the images we have inherited and to create
new possibilities for who holds power, who writes history and who gets to imagine the future.