In Dixie’s Land (1859–2001) (2020), Bethany Collins compiles 10 versions of the song Dixie, or Dixie’s Land, from key moments in American history, ranging from the original 1859 version written by Dan Emmet for a minstrel show in Ohio, to a 2001 version written by René Marie which morphs into Abel Meeropol’s powerful anti-lynching poem, Strange Fruit. Engaging with the concept of the contrafactum—a musical term describing a song where the text is changed or substituted while its melody remains the same—Collins takes these alternate versions of Dixie’s Land and transposes them into the minor key before partially obscuring them with charcoal illustrations of tear gas fired by police during the protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. By juxtaposing these contrafacta against visuals of extreme violence, Dixie’s Land (1859–2001) embodies Collins’s assertion that “language is . . . a prism through which to explore American history and the nuance of racial and national identities. And struggling with the duality of language—its potential and inevitable failure to make sense of the world—remains the basis for my making.”
