Analysis Of Faith Ringgold's 'Story Flag Quilt'

Story Flag Quilt

African-American artist, Faith Ringgold, is known primarily for her quilt-based works, a medium that has been historically regarded as a craft and not art form. In Story Flag Quilt (1985), however, the artist successfully fuses narrative, politics and crafts in a manner that transcends the medium itself. Ringgold’s vivid story painting quilts shows reflections of different stories of her life as a child. Ringgold composed a rectangular quilt with American flag-type organization piece of art entitled “The Story Flag” by using acrylic on a dyeing 57 by 78 inch canvas painted and pieced in fabric. In addition, she uses line, shape, value and texture to depict the points she was trying to make. The upper left quadrant is a rectangular

It is stylized by representation of real life that is recognizable to the average person. Ringgold has done numerous paintings that depict the struggle of the black community during and prior to the 1960’s. Her other art works include titles such as, The Flag is Bleeding following the theme of the black and white struggle. This particular piece has deep context. The Flag symbolizes the nation, but freedom itself. Ringgold has transformed the flag into a prison cell indicating the poor and unfair treatment of the blacks by the whites. However, the fifty stars are represented by small patches of white cloth each cut into the shapes of human skulls in profile, each skull contains a sequined eye. All these elements have in turn been applied onto a canvas background, which in turn has been attached to the requisite lining and backing of the quilt form (Dancing at the Louvre). The symbolism of its patchwork design and its association with domesticity, warmth, and tradition have often been employed within hegemonic discourses to legitimate, maintain, and reproduce both patriotic master narratives and prevailing social hierarchies. But, within the African American experience such meaning are far out weighted by the quilts long and intimate traditions as both a collaborative art form and a key site of memory, especially among

However, it was not until she openly embraced feminism that she began seriously to exploit the possibilities of written narratives as a creative and critical tool, helping her to articulate distinctly feminist consciousness. The incorporation of textiles and written narrative into her aesthetic was essentially to Ringgold’s ability to assume this more enlightened, empowered, position. In addition to collaborative efforts, often done with the assistance of Willi Posey Jones, her fashion designers mother. These works gave her access to forms of praxis and knowing linked to with a distinctly female, a family-oriented cultural legacy (Dancing at the