For another class about the artistic exchanges of the United States and Africa, I underwent research about quilting and other artistic textiles by tracing historical contact until the present day.
Ancient techniques, themes, and approaches to African textiles have traced their presence into transatlantic conversations within a contemporary artistic context. This paper will outline these various themes and motifs found in traditional African textiles through specific trends in textiles meant for decorative display rather than utilitarian uses. Traditional African language and culture have translated through time and adapted into a United States context. By tracing these evolutions from the first contact in the New World and slavery to a contemporary context, one can see many of these motifs play out through adaptation. This paper will analyze former slave quilt artist Harriet Powers and contemporary textile artist and historian Heather Andrea Williams in great detail. Other artists of relevance will be mentioned through exemplary work that will shape the conversation between these two specific artists. African American textile traditions call upon the characteristically bright colors and bold forms to create narratives and explore themes through their work. For example, Harriet Powers' Bible quilts are strikingly similar to that of the historic Fon appliqued cloths in present-day Benin.[1] While Heather Andrea Williams utilizes traditional African American motifs and processes to convey an untold history of emancipation in the slave south in her History Quilt, many other artists explore these motifs in various ways. By first describing the historical and technical context of African textiles, this paper will then trace a timeline of African and American contact and exchanges of these decorative use textiles.
[1] Elizabeth Anne Payne, ""A Quilt unlike Any Other": Rediscovering the Work of Harriet Powers," In Writing Women's History: A Tribute to Anne Firor Scott (The University of Mississippi, 2011), 72-96.
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