Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold is a contemporary African American female artist. She grew up in Harlem New York and was greatly inspired by her mother who worked as a fashion designer. As an artist, Ringgold focused on issues concerning African American women in contemporary America; she made many works in the 1960s inspired by the Civil Rights movement. She frequently used fabric as her medium for art in collaboration with her mother as well as a reference to the domestic sphere of women (both African and White) in the present and past; for instance, the quilt work Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?. In the featured work, the quilt illustrates the clever narrative of Aunt Jemima, who in this quilt is not merely the stereotypical black "mammy" but is instead a successful African American business women. Ringgold uses textual dialect and illustrations to tell the story of African American, female oppression within the community.
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/791
http://digital.library.louisville.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/vrc/id/1075/rec/7
http://www.pbs.org/americaquilts/century/stories/faith_ringgold.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/nyregion/24artsnj.html