Freedom is Going Home: Faith Ringgold & Hank Willis Thomas
Goodman Gallery Cape Town
Head-Image
Freedom is Going Home presents an intergenerational dialogue between Faith Ringgold and Hank Willis Thomas. The exhibition showcases new work by Thomas created in response to Ringgold's iconic story quilts, paintings and posters and marks the first time that the artists engage in a dual presentation. Drawing on both artists' exploratory approach to their mediums and pulling together visual references between the US and multiple African countries, the show speaks to their commitment to articulating Black stories and the desire for liberation across geographies.
Faith Ringgold is one of the most influential cultural figures of her generation with a career spanning sixty years. Her work ties together personal experience and collective histories. It is integrated with activism grounded in feminist and anti-racist foundations. Recent survey shows, including Faith Ringgold: American People (2022) at New Museum (New York) and its extension Faith Ringgold: Black is beautiful at Musée National Picasso-Paris (2023), demonstrate how civil rights and social justice have been at the core of her practice. Thomas’ practice is also framed by social justice. This is seen through his thematic interrogation of the media and historical archives as well as the inclusion of politically charged symbols across works. Collective projects such as For Freedoms extend this. Founded in 2016 by Thomas and other artists, academics and organisations, this artist-led initiative centres art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and collective liberation.
“The first time I recall coming across Faith Ringgold’s work was at an exhibition my mother curated at the Smithsonian. I had the poster from one of her quilts over my bed during high school. The idea of using a quilt as a material for storytelling was really impactful for me”
- Thomas.
Faith Ringgold
South African Love Story #2: Part I (diptych), 1985-87
Intaglio on canvas with quilted fabric border
Work: 160 x 193 cm / 63 x 76 in.
Unique
Faith Ringgold’s story quilt South African Love Story #2: Part I and II (diptych) (1985-87) is a work grounded in a South African narrative. Quoting a literary text, it tells the romantic story of a couple that has been separated and the struggle for freedom that eventually unites them. Produced during the 1980s, a highly volatile time in South Africa’s history, it highlights the intersections of race, gender and class in the country at the time and emphasizes solidarity between struggles across the Atlantic.
Faith Ringgold
South African Love Story #2: Part II (diptych), 1985-87
Intaglio on canvas with quilted fabric border
Work: 160 x 193 cm / 63 x 76 in.
Unique
During the 1980s Ringgold collaborated with Robert Blackburn and his famous New York printmaking workshop to create various prints which she incorporated into her story quilts. In South African Love Story #2 patches of dyed, printed and painted fabric surround the text, with the central panels bearing a pattern of entangled human forms that echoes the story’s content.
This historic quilt will be presented at Goodman Gallery, Cape Town in April 2023 marking its first presentation in South Africa since its creation almost 40 years ago.
Exhibition History
Works of Visual Arts Department Faculty, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Mandeville Gallery, San Diego, CA, April 6 – May 15, 1988
Faith Ringgold
Windows of the Wedding #15: Friends, 1974
Acrylic on canvas
Work: 203.2 x 91.4 cm / 80 x 35.5 in.
Unique
In 1974 Ringgold created the Windows of the Wedding series, her first completely abstract paintings. Each of the works were originally conceived of as a backdrop for a series of fantasy wedding doll couples, part of the artist’s ongoing series of doll soft sculptures. For Ringgold these couples represented ideal relationships and perfect weddings, an example she hoped to set for her two daughters.
Faith Ringgold
Windows of the Wedding #6: Patience and Understanding, 1974
Acrylic on canvas
Work: 203.2 x 90.2 cm
Unique
The paintings feature a visual language she invented based on Kuba designs from Central Africa. Each work in the series is intended to be a kind of hanging prayer rug for the couples to meditate with every morning and evening, giving them magic protection - and, above all, happiness.
In 1983 Ringgold painted four abstract paintings which she named the Dah series. She refers to these works and others of this period as "painting the inside of my head”. Up to that point her art had always been about specific people and issues.
“In order to produce an abstract image in my painting I positioned myself close to the canvas and made strokes of color all over it, one color at a time, until I had covered the whole surface. When I finally moved away from the canvas, I was surprised and excited by the abstract composition I had created. There were all sorts of strange images there, so I was satisfied that I was indeed "painting the inside of my head" and not anything else. I made borders painted in gold or silver for these works from glued-on canvas.”
The title for the series is derived from Faith’s daughter, who was only one year old when she was asked what she thought of these paintings. She responded with "Dah."
“The first time I was called NIGGER was at the Whitney Museum in New York City. I was passing out flyers about the Whitney’s discrimination against black artists when a white man told his daughter: “Don’t go near that “NIGGER” that was 39 years ago in 1968. Slavery is HAte. Hate is a sin”
(Transcription)
Faith Ringgold (b.1930, New York, United States) is an influential American cultural figure whose work has reflected her political activism and personal story within the context of the anti-racist and African American women’s movement.
Solo exhibitions include: Faith Ringgold: Black is beautiful, Musée national Picasso-Paris (2023); Faith Ringgold: American People, New Museum, New York (2022); Faith Ringgold, Serpentine Gallery, London (2019); Faith Ringgold: A Twenty-Five Year Survey, touring exhibition (1990-93); Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Arizona State Art Museum; Figge Art Museum, Davenport; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Women’s Center Gallery, University of California; Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland; and Tacoma Museum, Washington; and Twenty-Year Retrospective: Sculpture and Performance (1963-1984), The Studio Museum,
New York.
Group exhibitions include: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, The Broad, Los Angeles (2019) and Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2018) and Brooklyn Museum, New York (2017); Guerrilla Girls All-Woman, Palladium, New York (1985); Exhibition organised by Artists Against Apartheid (1984) and Benefit exhibition for Martin Luther King Jr., Museum of Modern Art, New York (1968).
Collections include: High Museum of Art, Atlanta; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Savannah College of Art, Georgia; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City; Schomberg Library; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
Awards and honours include: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; two National Endowment for the Arts Awards; The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Medal of Honor for Fine Arts from the National Arts Club. Ringgold received an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London (2013). Ringgold was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, MA (2017).
Ringgold lives and works in New Jersey. Faith Ringgold is represented by ACA Galleries, New York
Thomas builds on the African American quilting tradition shown through Ringgold’s work, as well as builds on the understanding of African American solidarity with the continent’s liberation struggles and complex political history in his new quilts. Constructed by fragmenting and rearranging flags from African countries, the artist uses folkloric quilt patterns of the American Underground Railroad (a secret network that assisted enslaved people in their journey to freedom) as a guide. The titles for the works are drawn from famous speeches or quotes from various Pan-Africanist leaders.
Hank Willis Thomas
Tomorrow, The United States of Africa, 2023
Mixed media including contemporary African National flags
Work: 214 x 423.5 cm / 84.25 x 166.75 in.
Unique
Thomas’s lenticulars I am You / I Am Joy (2023) and I am. Am I? AM I? I Am (2023) see a direct interaction with Ringgold’s set of collages from the 1970s. Her collages include phrases that speak to Black feminist sentiments borne out of her personal experiences. Thomas borrows Ringgold’s typographic aesthetic and layout to speak to ideas around identity in a contemporary context. The lenticulars also reference the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike, specifically the posters declaring “I AM A MAN.” These works, through the nature of their material, force viewers to look again, mirroring the artist’s revisiting of this historical moment and protest art more generally.
Hank Willis Thomas
I am. Am I? AM I? I Am, 2023
3D Lenticular
121.9 x 121.9 cm
Enquire
Hank Willis Thomas
I am You / I Am Joy, 2023
3D Lenticular
121.9 x 121.9 cm
Enquire
Hank Willis Thomas
Let us demand more of ourselves than we believe we possess, 2023
Mixed media including contemporary African National flags
Work: 114.3 x 114.3 cm / 45 x 45 in.
Unique
This series of quilts reimagines the flags of the states of Africa as source material for Willis Thomas’ ongoing quilt practice. Significant national symbols and colours are fragmented and rearranged into new constellations, using the folkloric quilt patterns of the American Underground Railroad as a guide. The titles are drawn from famous speeches or quotes from various Pan-Africanist leaders.
“ Let us now, as we plan for the coming year, set our GOALS too high; let us demand more of ourselves than we believe we possess.” Speech From The Throne Delivered By His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I On The Opening Day Of The Ethiopian Parliament On November 21st, 1963.
This quilt draws on the Jacob’s Ladder pattern, also referred to as the Road to California or Stepping Stones block, Underground Railway or Wagon Tracks block
Hank Willis Thomas
We must dare to invent the future, 2023
Mixed media including contemporary African National flags
Work: 151.1 x 151.1 cm / 59.9 x 59.9 in.
Unique
The series of quilts reimagines the flags of the states of Africa as source material for Willis Thomas’ ongoing quilt practice. Significant national symbols and colours are fragmented and rearranged into new constellations, using the folkloric quilt patterns of the American Underground Railroad as a guide. The titles are drawn from famous speeches or quotes from various Pan-Africanist leaders.
“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the mad men of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those mad men. … We must dare to invent the future.” Thomas Sankara, excerpted from an interview with Swiss Journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp in 1985.
This quilt draws on the North Star quilt pattern. A signal with two messages--one to prepare to escape and the other to follow the North Star to freedom in Canada. North was the direction of traffic on the Underground Railroad.
Solidarity forms part of the artist’s punctum series, inspired by Roland Barthes’ photographic theory of punctum, which refers to the detail in an image that pierces or stays with the viewer, Thomas uses sculpture to memorialize significant moments by isolating these gestures and investigating their ability to communicate ideas about individual and collective identity, ambition, perseverance, unity, and community
Hank Willis Thomas
Solidarity, 2023
Patina bronze
Work: 220.5 x 62.9 x 93.2 cm / 86.8 x 24.8 x 36.7 in.
Edition of 3
All Power to All People is a provocative artwork combining the Afro pick and the Black Power salute, both icons of Black identity and empowerment. When Willis Thomas conceived of a monumental Afro pick with a raised fist, he wanted to make an object that spoke specifically to African Americans, illustrative of the artist’s longstanding investigation into public art’s role in shaping collective discourse and societal values.
Around the 20th century, Afro combs started to take on a definite cultural and political meaning. The “black fist” was added to the bottom of many Afro combs and is a reference to the Black Power salute that was made popular during the 1960’s civil rights movement. In addition to using the pick as a styling tool, many Black men and women wore the picks in their Afros as a way to express their cultural pride.
The Afro pick exists today as many things to different people: it is representative not only of an era but a sound and a counter-culture. It is a uniting motif worn as adornment, a political emblem, and a signature of collective identity. Willis Thomas recalls the scale of Pop artist Claes Oldenburg’s monumental everyday objects, such as the Clothespin and Paint Torch, while marking the lack of commemorative statues that address equal justice and belonging.
Hank Willis Thomas
All Power to All People (bronze), 2023
Patina bronze
Work: 243.8 cm / 96 in.
Edition of 3
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, New Jersey, United States) is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. In January 2023, Thomas unveiled his most recent public artwork The Embrace in Boston, MA, a memorial to both the Kings and the 69 civil rights leaders in Boston.
Solo exhibitions include: Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal..., Portland Art Museum, Portland (2019). Shown at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2020) and travelled to Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati (2020); Blind Memory and Freedom Isn’t Always Beautiful, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2017); Unbranded: A Century of White Women, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro (2016) and York College Galleries, York (2017); Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2010 - 2011); All Things Being Equal, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2010); Progeny: Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York. Travelled to 40 Acres Art Gallery, Sacramento (2009); Hank Willis Thomas, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2009); Hank Willis Thomas, The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia (2008); Bearing Witness, African American Museum, Philadelphia (2006).
Group exhibitions include: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Art Foundation c/o Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah (2023); X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012-2022, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln (2023); Sounds of Blackness, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Metro Manila (2023); Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, New Museum, New York (2021); Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Changes, Toledo Museum of Art, Toldeo (2020 - 2021); Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati (2019); Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Taubman Museum, Roanoke (2018); Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo (2018); Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans (2018); and In Context, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2011)
Public collections include: International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Collaborative projects include: Question Bridge: Black Males; In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), Writing on the Wall; and is co-founder of For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse & direct action. In 2022 they were awarded the National Arts Award by Americans for the Arts.
Fellowships include: The Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2018) and W. E. B. Du Bois Institute Resident Fellowship, Harvard University, Cambridge (2011).
Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts (2004). In 2017, he received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
Thomas lives and works in New York City.
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, New Jersey, United States) is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. In January 2023, Thomas unveiled his most recent public artwork The Embrace in Boston, MA, a memorial to both the Kings and the 69 civil rights leaders in Boston.
Solo exhibitions include: Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal..., Portland Art Museum, Portland (2019). Shown at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2020) and travelled to Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati (2020); Blind Memory and Freedom Isn’t Always Beautiful, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2017); Unbranded: A Century of White Women, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro (2016) and York College Galleries, York (2017); Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2010 - 2011); All Things Being Equal, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2010); Progeny: Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York. Travelled to 40 Acres Art Gallery, Sacramento (2009); Hank Willis Thomas, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2009); Hank Willis Thomas, The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia (2008); Bearing Witness, African American Museum, Philadelphia (2006).
Group exhibitions include: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Art Foundation c/o Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah (2023); X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012-2022, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln (2023); Sounds of Blackness, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Metro Manila (2023); Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, New Museum, New York (2021); Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Changes, Toledo Museum of Art, Toldeo (2020 - 2021); Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati (2019); Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Taubman Museum, Roanoke (2018); Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo (2018); Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans (2018); and In Context, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2011)
Public collections include: International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Collaborative projects include: Question Bridge: Black Males; In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), Writing on the Wall; and is co-founder of For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse & direct action. In 2022 they were awarded the National Arts Award by Americans for the Arts.
Fellowships include: The Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2018) and W. E. B. Du Bois Institute Resident Fellowship, Harvard University, Cambridge (2011).
Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts (2004). In 2017, he received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
Thomas lives and works in New York City.
