This lecture examines quilting as a form of Black feminist knowledge production through the work of Faith Ringgold. Moving beyond conventional distinctions between art and craft, Ringgold’s story quilts demonstrate how visual and material practices can function as sites of theory, historical preservation, and political critique. By combining image, text, memory, and storytelling, her quilts challenge dominant understandings of whose knowledge counts and how knowledge is produced, transmitted, and preserved.
Drawing on Black feminist thought, the lecture explores quilting as a practice through which Black women have documented lived experience, sustained communal memory, and generated alternative ways of understanding the world. Ringgold’s work reveals how artistic practices can operate simultaneously as archives, acts of resistance, and forms of worldmaking. Through her quilts, stories become material objects, and cloth becomes a medium for preserving histories and imagining futures that exceed the limits of dominant cultural narratives.
Designed for audiences interested in art, design, visual culture, and critical theory, the talk offers an introduction to Black feminist approaches to creativity, memory, and knowledge while highlighting the enduring significance of quilting as both an artistic and intellectual practice.
