FAITH RINGGOLD (1930–2024)
HER NAME WAS FAITH, and, true to her appellation, she inspired me and many other artists to believe in our right to self-determination. To quote the lyrics of a song she wrote, “Anyone can fly . . . all you got to do is try.” I am writing this for Mrs. Faith Ringgold with hopes that I am not interrupting her celestial explorations.
I and so many other Black artists, women artists, and artists who do not fit society’s conventions owe Mrs. Ringgold an incredible debt of gratitude. I want to say thank you: I am profoundly grateful for the hard-earned path that you cleared, because it is no exaggeration to say that I would not be where I am today if not for you.
A prolific artist, Faith Ringgold was an American painter, sculptor, author, performer, educator, feminist, and activist. Her quilted work Woman on a Bridge #1: Tar Beach, 1988—a Harlem rooftop landscape with a group of cardplayers at a table, and a young girl, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, soaring through the starry sky—is one of her best-known pieces. In 1991, Mrs. Ringgold adapted Tar Beach into an award-winning children’s book, which is how I became aware of her art. In 2006, I was a middle school art teacher in Plainfield, New Jersey, and Mrs. Ringgold visited our school. Meeting her and learning that she was a mother, a former teacher, and an artist who created quilted works changed my perspective. I saw a Black woman just like me who made brilliant work that hung in galleries and museums. Seeing Mrs. Ringgold’s art made me believe that my aspirations were not just dreams—that they could be and were already being achieved.
Faith Ringgold was one of the preeminent Black feminist visual artists of our time, leading the charge as the first person to organize a demonstration for Black artists against a major museum in the United States. In 1968, she and other activists were outraged when New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art opened a major exhibition called “The 1930s: Painting and Sculpture in America” and it did not include any Black artists. Legendary Black artists such as Lois Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Augusta Savage were all excluded. Mrs. Ringgold spoke out, demonstrated, and was even arrested protesting for equal representation of Black people and women in museums and institutions.
Seeing Mrs. Ringgold’s art made me believe that my aspirations were not just dreams.
“I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women, and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man,” Mrs. Ringgold once said. The problem persists even to this day: The Burns Halperin report recently found that works by female-identifying artists made up only 11 percent of acquisitions and were included in less than 15 percent of exhibitions at thirty-one US museums between 2008 and 2020. Furthermore, work by Black American women constituted a mere 0.5 percent of acquisitions at these institutions. These numbers and my very real firsthand experiences let me know that our work is not yet done, not by a long shot.
As fiber artists, we look to Faith Ringgold as our art godmother. I am inspired every day to push the boundaries of my artistic expression because of the legacy she left behind. Her technical mastery is evident in works such as American People Series #20: Die,1967, and her “Woman on a Bridge”series, 1988. The twelve-foot-long Die depicts the violent and terrifying effects of racial hatred. It was created at the height of the civil rights era and features multiple Black and white adults engaged in a confrontation, all knives, guns, and blood. Amid this chaos are two children clinging together—one Black and one white—both terrified. Mrs. Ringgold designed the scene on a grid, flattening perspective in the style of the Cubists. She rendered the figures with exaggerated diagonal shapes that lead your eyes quickly across the scene. The vibrant colors read as a pattern rather than as a narrative. Mrs. Ringgold seduces the viewer, holding you transfixed before complex and traumatic ideas with light and color. In the“Woman on a Bridge”works, she adapted her mastery of color and pattern to actual textiles, building her compositions from brightly colored fabrics with quilted borders. Her message is socially conscious, explorative in materials and concepts, and beautifully executed.
Faith Ringgold wrote about being inspired by foremothers such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, and now she has taken her place among the ancestors who fought to make a place for us. I am thankful that Mrs. Ringgold had the courage to demand change in the art world. I am thankful for her setting the bar so high with her artistic genius. I am thankful she was accessible and able to offer help to her fellow artists and human beings. Now, as she soars beyond our reach, we can all wish her well and remember her words: “All you got to do is try.”
Bisa Butler is an artist based in West Orange, New Jersey.
