2 In this writing I move away from some of the more well-rehearsed aspects of Ringgold’s career as an activist, 3 painter, 4 and performance artist, 5 to focus on one specific aspect of her artistic practice: the relationship between text and textile found in Ringgold’s storytelling quilts, and the events that led her to use textile as a surface on which she could publish. Despite enjoying considerable acclaim, Ringgold’s own acknowledgement that “I can’t get through the world without recognizing that race and sex influence everything I do in my life” presents us with the intersectional politics that have long impacted her career.

Born in Harlem, New York, in 1930, Ringgold is an African-American artist who has been acknowledged in the context of the United States by art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson as “one of the earliest feminists to incorporate textiles into her practice.” 1 Her published writing includes numerous children’s books and a memoir, We Flew Over the Bridge (1995).

What can be acknowledged is that these textiles provided a useful, and ultimately successful, route to publishing narratives drawn from her experience and imagination which defy the narrative expectations of her generation of black women artists and writers.įaith Ringgold’s artistic career, which now spans more than five decades, includes activism, writing, as well as performance art and the creation of paintings, political posters and quilts. The effectiveness of Ringgold’s insistence that her quilts be understood as art rather than craft remains unclear. After hearing Ringgold recount this experience, I found a new appreciation for her story quilts, exemplified in works such as Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? (1983), Slave Rape Story Quilt (1985) and The Purple Quilt (1986), which mark a particular phase in her career.

This ‘rejection’ precipitated Ringgold’s turn to the textile as an alternative surface upon which she could publish. During a public dialogue in 2019 African-American artist Faith Ringgold described her original publisher’s disappointment that the biography she had written did not recount experiences of subjugation – experiences Ringgold suspected were an expectation of her gender and race.

Tar beach story quilt