American Dream
ACA Galleries presents Faith Ringgold’s work from the 1970s
ACA Galleries presents Faith Ringgold’s work from the 1970s
Faith Ringgold writes,“i grew up in Harlem during the Great Depression.this did not mean I was poor and oppressed.we were protected from oppression and surrounded by a loving family.” Her mother was a fabric designer and a seamstress and encouraged her to follow her artistic leanings. Her father was a storyteller.as a “painter, writer, speaker, mixed media sculptor and performance artist,” Ringgold has been an activist for women’s and Africanamerican rights. She says,“my process is designed to give us ‘colored folk’ and women a taste of the American dream straight up. Since the facts don’t do that too often, I decided to make it up.”
She was encouraged to go to college and received her bachelor’s degree in 1955 and her master’s in 1959. She is professor emerita at the University of California, San Diego and has received more than 75 awards including 22
honorary doctor of fine arts degrees. And she writes award-winning children’s books.
ACA Galleries in Newyork is presenting the exhibition Faith Ringgold: Life in the 1970s, October 13 through December 15. The ’70s marked the peak of her political activism. Many of the works in the exhibition have never before been exhibited in public. Ringgold adapted the traditional craft of quilt making for her own quilts and quilt-like paintings and assemblages. America Free Angela, 1971, is a collage of cut paper in a quilt pattern.angela Davis was arrested and jailed in 1970 for allegedly conspiring in a failed escape from a Marin County, California, courthouse. Several people were killed and the guns were registered to her. She wasn’t aware of the escape plans and was
nowhere near the location of the crime. It was impossible not to be aware of the Free Angela Davis movement at that time. John Lennon and Yoko Ono and The Rolling Stones wrote songs about her. She was acquitted of all charges in 1972 and has been an advocate for social justice and prison reform ever since.
She is distinguished professor emerita at University of California Santa Cruz. Ringgold, herself, was arrested on lesser charges in 1970. She created the poster for an exhibition at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park in Newyork called The People’s Flag Show.the exhibition was assembled to protest laws about the use of the flag. She and two others were arrested for desecration of the flag and fined $100 each.
Ringgold’s thangka-like Feminist Series:we Meet the Monster #12 is painted on canvas with a cloth frame. She said, at the time,“in the 1970s, being black and a feminist was equivalent to being a traitor to the cause of black people.‘you seek to divide us,’ I was told.‘women’s Lib is for white women. The black woman is too strong now— she’s already liberated.’” She stated that she had suffered more from sexism than from racism and rejected the theory that “Women’s Lib is for white women.” In her memoir, We Flew Over the Bridge, she wrote,“art was the one thing that I always loved to do.yet, because I had never heard of a black artist, male or female, when I was a child, I did not think of art as a possible profession. In retrospect, I think I must have taken art for granted at this time— as something to do rather than be.” At nearly 88, she has been and is an artist. In addition to her work from the ’70s at ACA, this year, there are works from her entire career being shown in galleries and traveling exhibitions from London to Minneapolis. Next June she will have a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in Kensington Park, London.