Across a wide range of media, from painting to textiles to works on paper, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) developed a practice that merged history, activism, formal inquiry, and global influences. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, her work evolved from her awareness of politics and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s, which she channeled into “an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans,” says Jack Shainman Gallery.
Opening this month at the gallery, a retrospective spans Ringgold’s explorations of textiles, sculpture, and works on canvas. She is renowned for her story quilts, which combine fabric and embroidery with painted tableaux of Harlem, jazz clubs, portraits—especially of women—and historical references to slavery and the oppression of Black people in America.
Advent of Black Power” (1967), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
Earlier this year, a documentary called “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” was released that chronicles the artist’s first public art piece, a feminist mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. The mural, “For the Women’s House” contains eight segments—patchwork-like—that contain images of women in predominantly male career roles. Works like “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the Advent of Black Power” and “Black Light #11: US America Black” mirror this motif, redolent of a quilt, which presages her later work.
At Jack Shainman Gallery, Faith Ringgold highlights the artist’s extraordinary and innovative approach to figuration, perspective, and material. She was acutely aware of the art historical canon as a predominantly white space, so she “sought out forms more suitable to the exploration of gender and racial identity that she so urgently pursued,” the gallery says. In the 1970s, she traveled to Europe and onward to Africa, gathering ideas.
When she first began working with textiles, Ringgold made what she called “tankas,” which were inspired by sacred Tibetan thangkas—textile images intended for meditation—that she saw on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ringgold’s iterations incorporated sewn fabric borders around paintings made on unstretched canvas.
Eventually, these works became more abstract, then morphed into soft sculptures and performance pieces inspired by African masking traditions. As her work evolved into the 1980s, the story quilt emerged as a way to render imagery on a larger scale and connect with time-honored textile craft traditions often associated with women. Jack Shainman says:
The significance of Faith Ringgold’s life continues to be felt and understood in new, urgent and relevant ways…Just as she fought tirelessly against the prevailing sentiments of racial and gendered exclusion of both her time and our own, so too did her inimitable work in textiles provide an example of how life and art—so often presumed to be separate—are in fact deeply and fundamentally intertwined.
Faith Ringgold opens on November 14 and continues through January 24 in New York City. Explore more of the artist’s work on her estate’s website and Instagram.
