Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can’t drop that. It’s reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art. – Faith Ringgold
Born in Harlem, New York, Faith Ringgold has produced artwork that tells and re-tells historical narratives and realities influenced by her own personal history and the history of black people in America. From Folk art to Outsider art, historical art to contemporary, Ringgold’s forever culturally relevant visual language has taken on many forms, using many different materials to do so. Children’s books, paintings, quilts, prints, and tankas make up just some of her preferred media. In Ringgold’s Coming to Jones Road Study #5: We Jus Keep a’ Comin’, a colorful, illustrative narrative chronicles moments of black migration. The momentum in the painting is reinforced by the figures who march upward through the forest in their search for a newfound freedom. This painting and the series it is part of reflect Ringgold’s robust ability to tell stories that meld critical personal and shared histories. Ringgold’s artwork is in collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, all in New York; The National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago; and Boston Museum of Fine Art.
