Black quilt artist Ringgold dies at 93
Activist fought on 2 fronts: Racism, gender bias in art
NEW YORK — Faith Ringgold, an award-winning author and artist who broke down barriers for Black female artists and became famous for her richly colored and detailed quilts combining painting, textiles and storytelling, has died. She was 93.
The artist’s assistant, Grace Matthews, told The Associated Press that Ringgold died Friday night at her home in Englewood, New Jersey. Matthews said Ringgold had been in failing health.
Ringgold’s highly personal works of art can be found in private and public collections around the country and beyond, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Atlanta’s High Museum of Fine Art.
But her rise to prominence as a Black artist wasn’t easy in an art world dominated by white males and in a political cultural where Black men were the leading voices for civil rights. A founder in 1971 of the Where We At artists collective for Black women, Ringgold became a social activist, frequently protesting the lack of representation of Black and female artists in American museums.
“I became a feminist out of disgust for the manner in which women were marginalized in the art world,” she told The New York Times in
2019. “I began to incorporate this perspective into my work, with a particular focus on Black women as slaves and their sexual exploitation.”
In her first illustrated children’s book, “Tar Beach,” the spirited heroine takes flight over the George Washington Bridge. The story symbolized women’s self-realization and freedom to confront “this huge masculine icon — the bridge,” she explained.
The story is based on her narrative quilt of the same name now in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
While her works often deal with issues of race and gender, their folklike style is vibrant, optimistic and lighthearted and often reminiscent of her warm memories of her life in Harlem.
Ringgold introduced quilting into her work in the 1970s after seeing brocaded Tibetan paintings called thangkas. They inspired her to create patchwork fabric borders, or frames, with handwritten narrative around her canvas acrylic paintings. For her 1982 story quilt, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemina,” Ringgold confronted the struggles of women by undermining the Black “mammy” stereotype and telling the story of a successful African American businesswoman named Jemima Blakey.
“Aunt Jemima conveys the same negative connotation as Uncle Tom, simply because of her looks,” she told The New York Times in a 1990 interview.
Ringgold also created a number of public works. “People Portraits,” comprised of 52 individual glass mosaics representing figures in sports, performance and music, adorns the Los Angeles Civic Center subway station. “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines” are two mosaic murals in a Harlem subway station that feature figures like Dinah Washington, Sugar Ray Robinson and Malcolm X.