Major Installation of Acclaimed Artist Faith Ringgold to be Presented at Art Basel’s Art Unlimited

Faith Ringgold: The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro
10th June, 2024 – 16th June, 2024
Art Unlimited
Art Basel
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10
4058 Basel
Switzerland

Goodman Gallery and ACA Galleries are proud to present the first major display of work by the acclaimed artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold taking place at Art Unlimited, Art Basel this June 2024. The large-scale multimedia installation The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro will be premiered as a tribute to the pioneering artist whose significant career is also celebrated in a display at Kunsthaus Zürich in a show titled Faith Ringgold.

Jazz Stories until 8 August 2024. Ringgold’s contribution to art and art history is belatedly being recognised, following a major US survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – the most comprehensive exhibition of hers to date – which ended shortly before her death in Spring 2024. With a career spanning sixty years Ringgold is widely known for powerful works grounded in feminist and anti-racist foundations, tying together personal experience and collective histories.

Ringgold’s innovative use of quilting and storytelling techniques revolutionized the art world by bridging the gap between fine art and craft traditions. 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), are testimony to the expanse of her practice and demonstrate how civil rights and social justice were at the core of her artistic impulses

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By the early 1970’s, Ringgold’s emerging feminist consciousness and growing interest in non-western art would inspire her first foray into textiles. The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro was Ringgold’s first masked performance work. It was conceived in response to the American Bicentennial celebrations of 1976. Bridging craft techniques with diverse ceremonial traditions, the installation demonstrates Ringgold’s pursuit in finding forms more suitable for the radical exploration of gender and racial identity themes central to her work.

In Faith’s words: ‘I certainly agreed with many black people at the time that we had no reason to celebrate 200 years of American independence; for almost half of that time we had been in slavery, and for most of the following years we had still been struggling to become fully free. So, this was a wake not a celebration. I wanted to create a visual narrative of the dynamics of racism…’ The installation is a statement of this period of Civil Rights protest.

Faith Ringgold: The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro is on display from the 10th of June, 2024 until the 16th of June, 2024 at Art Unlimited

©2024 Goodman Gallery, ACA Galleries

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