Carolyn Mazloomi spent four decades collecting quilts. What she gathered is a documented history of Black American life, stitched rather than written, and now on show at Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem until 8 August.
Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories draws entirely from Mazloomi's personal collection, parts of which have already entered the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the International Quilt Museum. As founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network, she has spent her career arguing that these textiles deserve a central place in American art history. This exhibition is her argument made visible.
Wendell Brown, The Family, 2024.
Wendell Brown's quilts anchor the show. His path into the medium began with a single encounter, standing before Faith Ringgold's Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro at the High Museum of Art. He later assisted Ringgold in New York and carried her influence back into his own studio in Columbia, South Carolina. There, Brown has spent three decades working through W.E.B. Du Bois's idea of the Veil of Double Consciousness, treating black fabric and layered iconography as a way to hold two ways of seeing at once. His quilts refuse to stay flat. They push into sculpture and installation, occupying real space rather than hanging quietly on a wall...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Michael Cummings, Haitian Mermaid #2, 1996.
All images courtesy of the artists and Claire Oliver gallery.