Raise Your Voice, Unite, Tell Your Story
Faith Ringgold
The Serpentine Gallery
6 JUNE – 8 SEPTEMBER 2019
Artist, Activist and Author: Faith Ringgold is much more than a triple-threat. Born in 1930s Harlem, New York, she has spent her life as a feminist, fighting backlash against African-American’s. Her works range from Poetry, Textile and Painting, each bursting with character, colour and a deep moral message in their own unique and powerful way.
The exhibition begins with the series American People, which aims to depict the social inequalities and racial tensions she witnessed during the Civil Rights era. I was immediately attracted to the style of these paintings: a pop-art-like, humorous, yet detailed effort to portray the people around her. One work, titled The American Dream, shows a woman, half black and half white, displaying an expensive diamond ring. The fairly abstract style used makes this distinction subtle, yet strong. The message is clear: The American Dream is a racially integrated, harmonised, and combined force. The ring itself plays a pivotal role in the painting, reminding us that wealth often defines the class distinctions evident at Ringgold’s time. By placing the ring on a black woman’s hand instead of white, Ringgold could be potentially playing on the fact of ‘richness’ - whilst black society may not have been as rich financially at the time, they have wealth in abundance in other areas; be it family, culture or experience.
Ringgold’s textile works also play a massive role in the exhibition. Inspired by Tibetan thangka paintings and made in collaboration with her fashion-designer mother - Ringgold was overjoyed that the quilts finally enabled her to ‘publish’ her poetry. My favourite quilt explored themes of body image, weight gain and the male gaze. Incredibly humorous, it had titles such as “I really hate to exercise”, where she describes men bringing her “pork chop sandwiches” instead of roses, claiming “that was romance in the 1950’s – greasy food”. The central image to the surrounding text is a slim, happy woman, posing in a pink swimsuit, shadowed behind with a much larger, looming, structure. This woman could be representing societies ‘ideal’, overshadowed by the looming reality (the average dress size in the UK is still a size 16). Alternatively, it could also be representing the fact that many women think they are a lot larger than they actually are in reality: the slim happy woman being what the woman is perceived as by others: and the angry, looming, larger force being what she sees herself as.
Women play a pivotal role in Ringgold’s work – being the subject of a large majority of it. What I found interesting was the fact that despite Ringgold’s evident feminist views, the women are displayed as much more vulnerable and exposed than the men. Take the images above, for example: three beautiful fabric painting’s which depict naked African women in traditional dress (or lack thereof). The series, entitled Slave Rape, shows these women as surprised, shocked, scared: hiding and running away from the looming force of the male. These works are in direct contrast to the ones portraying male figures, such as Martin Luther King. In line with her other quilt work, MLK is surrounded by words from his famous speech, and engulfed with a background of blossoms – evoking images of spring: growth, new life and beauty. These power play differences in her works are interesting, given the fact that despite her own beliefs, Ringgold remained sceptical to the impact the Civil Rights had for women, “For me the concept of Black Power carried with it a big question mark. Was it intended only for the black men, or would black women have power too?”
Questions of what it means to be a woman are also explored within the most striking work of the whole exhibition - The Flag is Bleeding. In this painting, a black woman is seen protecting her two children. She is bleeding from her heart, and the American flag which she is placed upon is bleeding too. The fact that this woman is instantly recognisable as the ‘mother’ represents the important domestic role of the female in Ringgold’s time. It also, however, is a somewhat contradictory message at a time when women were trying to regain power and break out of the household confines they felt they had been assigned for so long. The fact that the flag is bleeding with the woman could be a message that until the women are saved as well as the men, the country cannot heal.
Overall, Ringgold’s work is like nothing I have seen before. A fusion of painting, poetry, and storytelling: a mix of colour, pop-art and culture. I left feeling truly satisfied and more than a little enlightened: someone please let me know where I can find these bold, brash, and beautiful works again.
OVERALL RATING: *****
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/faith-ringgold
