Faith Ringgold has always said what she pleases.
Born in 1930 in Harlem, the 93-year-old artist has spent decades creating artwork that challenges dominant cultural narratives about Blackness and womanhood. She's fought for the inclusion of Black artists in spaces like the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Ringgold has even seen the inside of a jail cell for expressing her artistic voice, when she was accused of desecrating the American flag in 1970.
This audacious spirit of challenging and questioning the status quo is at the center of "Freedom to Say What I Please," now on view at the Worcester Art Museum. It's the first New England solo exhibit of Ringgold's work in nearly 15 years, says Samantha Cataldo, associate curator of contemporary art.
The exhibit is comprised of 16 pieces that range from soft sculptures to prints to one of Ringgold's celebrated "story quilts" that interweave textile work, painting and storytelling.
The story quilt at the core of the exhibit is "Picasso's Studio" and is a part of the museum's permanent collection. Created in 1991, it's one of 12 story quilts in the "French Collection," which follows a fictional character named Willia Marie Simone, who is loosely based on Ringgold. "So all of Faith's work both is and isn't about her," says Cataldo. "The story that's happening is very much related to Ringgold's own life as an artist, though the setting and the time isn't hers."
The story takes place in the 1920s. Ringgold's protagonist travels from New York to Paris to live and work as a model (Ringgold first visited Paris with her mother and daughters in 1961.) There, she has a number of experiences and meets cultural figures like Henri Matisse and Josephine Baker. "Picasso's Studio" portrays Simone modeling nude for Pablo Picasso, with his famous painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" situated behind her.
As Simone sits, she has a conversation with the women in Picasso's painting. "[It] revolves around that issue of Picasso's 'sources' of inspiration, which, for those who have seen enough of his work, you do have that African influence, that sort of co-opting of African artists," Cataldo says.
Simone comes to realize that she's not interested in being a subject for white male artists. "She's like, 'I'm not the model. I'm the artist and I should be able to say what I want'," explains Cataldo. "So the title of our exhibition actually comes from how this text ends and the text is in the form of a letter that this protagonist is writing back to her aunt in America." In the letter, Simone writes, " You asked me once why I wanted to become an artist. It is because it's the only way I know of feeling free. My art is my freedom to say what I please."
Through the character of Simone, Ringgold revises history and creates one in which a Black woman is at the artistic and cultural nexus. All of the pieces in "Freedom to Say What I Please" highlight Ringgold's ability to craft layered questions about our past and present while emphasizing her penchant for offering new realities in which marginalized people, like Simone, are centered.
Some works in the exhibit are more closely tied to Ringgold's personal life, like two pieces from the "Baby Faith and Willi" series. Rendered in abstract shapes that suggest forms, the artist made these works after the passing of her mother Willi Posey Jones, who was a major influence and presence in her life. Jones died before "Baby Faith," Ringgold's granddaughter, was born. The move to creating more abstract work was, in part, a reaction to her grief.
"Faith is thinking that these generations above and below her aren't going to be able to be together in life, but they can be together in spirit and in her art," Cataldo explains. "And I think that that's really beautiful. And these are some of my favorite works in the show because they're deeply personal and so connected to her life."
Other works, like the print "United States of Attica," emphasize Ringgold's acute attention to the social issues impacting the world around her. It was created in the aftermath of the 1971 Attica Uprising, which exposed abuse in the American penitentiary system. The work is dedicated to the men who lost their lives.
It's "one of the lovely, but also heartbreaking things of this exhibition," says Cataldo. "Because there's work that Faith made literally 50 years ago that she could have made yesterday with slightly different words or names in it, and it would still be advocating for the same things. It would still be pointing out the same societal issues in America... This piece to me has been the one that most clearly shows that the work is not is not done."
The world is certainly slow to change. Many of the same inequities Ringgold was actively fighting against in the '60s and '70s still exist in today's art spaces and institutions. A 2019 survey of 18 major museums found that 85% of the works in their collections were by white artists while 87% are by men. Although there's been a renewed interest in Ringgold's work, particularly in the past ten years, it's a recognition that often comes far too late for many Black female artists.
There's more work to do when it comes to the representation of artists of color in museums. But Cataldo is optimistic. "I think museums are starting to think more broadly and maybe also even starting to pay more attention to their immediate communities and finding the artists who are there and might be those Faith Ringgolds who are being overlooked in their time," she says.
It's why the message at the heart of "Freedom to Say What I Please" is so important. "The act itself of being a Black woman artist...she's saying what she wants to say," Cataldo points out. "That itself is a radical act, and that itself is a form of protest and advocacy for more representation of women, more Black people in the art world."
Jan 5, 2024
