https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvTP_FigYB0&feature=youtu.be
Reclamation and Craftivism
In this section women artists proudly embrace gendered connotations associated with textile and craftwork to reclaim the medium within their art. Ultimately, these women create pieces incorporating textile that (re)establish agency, womanhood, and identity, all while erasing negative connotations associated with these forms of art, and elevating the viewer’s perception of textiles from a merely domestic pastime to a valid form of self-expression and even high art. Additionally, we might want to consider the ways in which these women have created associations between crafts and forms of activism.
Faith Ringgold, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Aries
Faith Ringgold
b. 1930
The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles
Dimensions: 55.88 cm x 74.61 cm
Medium: lithograph on paper
Date Created: 1996
Faith Ringgold was born in Harlem, New York, during the Civil Rights Movement and the Harlem Renaissance, shaping her future as an activist and artist. Ringgold works with various mediums to tell her stories but chooses to tell the story of eight influential and strong Black women through quilting. Quilting Bees were social events where women would share techniques, sing, eat, and tell stories. The famous Vincent van Gogh stands off in the corner, allowing the women to take their place in the spotlight. Ringgold chooses to include Madam Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hammer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ella Baker. On the lower left, Ringgold also includes a fictional character, Willia Marie Simon. There are various interpretations of Willia Marie Simon, but she is most commonly understood to represent Ringgold herself or the millions of black women hidden from the spotlight fighting for justice. The quilt is positioned in a way that invites the viewer to work alongside these women for equality. Ringgold is reclaiming the art of quilting for the black community while telling the story of eight incredible women who helped shape the united states as a country.
Tell Me What You’re Thinking
Mickalene Thomas
b. 1971
Tell Me What You’re Thinking
Dimensions: 100.97 cm x 125.73 cm
Medium: photograph, chromogenic print on paper
Date Created: 2016
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary mixed-media artist whose work delivers empowered images of black women in richly decorated interior settings. Thomas takes from art historical representations of women–often in moments of leisure or relaxation–and posits them in an abstract space of technicolor textiles. In Tell Me What You’re Thinking, the model is reclined in a pose reminiscent of art historical paintings of odalisques. The variety of patterned fabrics break up the picture plane, obscuring our sense of depth and our ability to render and register a definable space. The studio-quality lighting and perfectly placed props of black culture, such as the album cover adorning a Diana Ross portrait, intentionally reveal the staged nature of the image and raise the notion of artifice, adornment, and the process of dressing up ourselves and our environment. Thomas manipulates the perception of the decoration and display of women throughout time and women of color in the modern era in doing so.
Kiki Smith, Sampler
Kiki Smith
b. 1954
Sampler
Dimensions: 61.12 cm x 45.56 cm
Medium: photo relief etching on paper
Date Created: 2007
Sampler is one of 206 photo relief etchings made by Kiki Smith inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson. An etching accompanies every poem in the book of Dickinson’s poetry titled Sampler, holding two-fold meaning as containing a curated selection–or sample–of Dickinson’s poetry and alluding to the embroidered samplers sewn by women to demonstrate their domestic skills in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Smith employs the practice and imagery of the craft, using a needle and other sharp-pointed tools to scratch the lines in the emulsion of photographic negatives. This allows light to pass through the images when making the photopolymer plates for letterpress printing. Kiki honors the contributions made by women to art and literature and makes the private, primarily educational practice of embroidery visible for interpretative analysis.
Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth’
Martine Gutierrez
b. 1989
Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth,’ p92, 2018
Dimentions: 105.41 cm x 72.39 cm x 3.81 cm
Medium: C-print mounted on Sintra, hand-painted artist frame
Date Created: 2018
Martine Gutierrez is a Latinx and Indigenous transwoman who uses her work to comment on issues of identity as it relates to gender and heritage. Gutierrez’s Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth,’ is as a page from her larger work “Indigenous Woman” which takes the form of a self-published fashion magazine focusing on such themes. In this photograph, we see a self-portrait of Gutierrez as Tlazoteotl the Aztec goddess of sin, filth, and purification. In her depiction of the goddess, Gutierrez highlights her own identity as an indigenous transwoman through the use of performative femininity embedded with Indigenous Latinx culture. This is seen primarily through her glamorous depictions of clothing, jewelry, and makeup which reference her indigenous ancestry. For example, her garment seems to use textiles woven into indigenous patterns while her use of gold jewelry might be seen as a reference to Mayan and Aztec culture as well as Spanish colonization. Finally, Gutierrez uses makeup to unconventionally depict Tlazoteotl who traditionally has a black mouth, representing the eater of filth, with gold lipstick. This could be read as a reference to her identity as a transwoman and a member of the LGTBQ+ community in that the change from black, in this case, associated with sin and filth, to gold which is associated with wealth, and power can be seen as a comment on growing acceptance and celebration of queer people and diversity as a whole.
