A Patchwork of Pain and Memories
The quilts of Gee's Bend are created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River. Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation and they still share Pettway as the last name.
Since the mid-19th century, women of Gee’s Bend have refined and evolved their quilting abilities in isolation and with extremely limited resources and have transformed worn clothes, sacks, and other fabric remnants into patterns that works of art.
In the 1960s, motivated by Martin Luther King Jr’s visit, community members became active in the Civil Rights Movement, ferrying to the county seat at Camden to register to vote. Authorities reacted by eliminating ferry service altogether, effectively isolating the community and cutting it off from basic services. During this period, local women came together to found the Freedom Quilting Bee, a workers cooperative that provided much-needed economic opportunity and political empowerment.
A blockbuster exhibition in the early 2000’s made the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, famous for their visually stunning quilts. Hailed by the New York Times as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced,” Gee’s Bend quilts constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art and today are in the permanent collections of over 30 leading art museums. The quilters now also have sold-out Etsy shops and collaborations with high-profile fashion designers.
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Art Direction by Pooja Dhingra
Illustration by Annie Hazarika
Text compiled from:
The Purpose of art is a short series on stories of art and its many uses.
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