Faith Ringgold

Harlem-born artist and activist Ringgold began working with textiles after a trip to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in 1972. There, a gallery guard introduced her to Tibetan thangkas—traditional Buddhist paintings on cloth, surrounded by silk brocades. Returning home, Ringgold enlisted the help of her mother, a professional dressmaker, to make politically minded thangkas of her own, sewing frames of cloth around depictions of brutal rape and slavery. In 1980, Ringgold crafted her first quilt—again, with some sewing help from her mother—called Echoes of Harlem (1980), portraying 30 Harlem residents in a mandala-like composition.

After her mother died in 1981, Ringgold continued to work with textiles, embarking on a series of story quilts that would come to define her career. These works combined visual and written storytelling to explore topics such as the underrepresentation of African Americans in art history, the artist’s upbringing in Harlem, and the legacy of Aunt Jemima. According to the artist, the textile medium allows her political messages to be more digestible. “When [viewers are] looking at my work, they’re looking at a painting and they’re able to accept it better because it is also a quilt,” she says.

Click the HOME button below to view her website