Patchwork is an inherently slow art; with each scrap of fabric sewn together piece by piece, it’s one of the forms of artisanship which spring most readily to mind when we think of a ‘labour of love’. A quilt offers warmth, security and comfort – but its making is also an act of resistance against the commodification of time in a fast-paced modern world. In recent years, there has been a new wave of interest not only in patchwork itself, but in the medium’s rich cultural heritage. Traditionally associated with the domestic sphere and often minimised as ‘women’s work’, quilting and textile art is being revived by a new generation of artists, curators and designers who are celebrating its personal and political legacies.
‘Quilts are sturdy love. In times of need, people turn to patchwork again and again,’ writes Jess Bailey, art historian, author of the recently published zine Many Hands Make a Quilt: Short Histories of Radical Quilting and the woman behind the popular Instagram account Public Library Quilts. She describes how Black artists and activists like Estelle Witherspoon created the Freedom Quilting Bee in 1966, which secured distribution deals for mail-order quilts made by Black community leaders in the American South. ‘These lines of connection between recent quilt history and the present mainstream visibility of patchwork culture remain unbroken,’ she says.
92-year-old Faith Ringgold, whose retrospective American People opened last year at the New Museum, has made quilting a central part of her art practice, conjuring everything from protest banners to pieces that reflect the intimacy of the home. ‘Black women will continue to be at the heart of quilt culture,’ Bailey explains. ‘Today’s quilt revival did not come out of nowhere.’
Contemporary artists such as the Welsh-Ghanaian Anya Paintsil (WoI Dec 2022) use fabric and weaving to explore questions of identity; Paintsil makes use of unusual materials such as weaves, braids and even her own hair in her colourful works. American artist Qualeasha Wood combines traditional textile techniques and contemporary technology, creating tapestries infused with the pop-cultural visual language of the digital realm; a solo exhibition of her work is currently on display at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery until 4 June.
In its simplest form, quilting is the stitching together of materials, typically fabric scraps that would otherwise go to waste: the medium, then, is shot through with a sense of invention as a response to necessity. The earliest examples across Europe, India and East Asia can be traced to the 13th century, ranging from bedcovers to wearable items. Due to their large size and intricate patterning, many of these historic works are attributed to multiple makers; they tell stories not just about the history of textile art, but of a social activity, of personal connections and family heirlooms.
At a major collective exhibition which opened last month at the Royal Academy, titled Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers, the patchwork quilts of Gee’s Bend are among the headline events. First founded on a former slave-owning plantation in Alabama, this Black women’s cooperative dates back to the 1960s. The community remains active to this day, passing down skills from generation to generation to continue creating their colourful Modernist-inflected compositions from recycled bits of fabric. One quilt on display at the RA, made in 2021, was fashioned from scraps of denim jeans, their various studs and pockets still visible.
The intergenerational sharing of knowledge, after the fashion of Gee’s Bend, took a fresh turn at The New Bend at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset this year. The exhibition, curated by Legacy Russell, an artist, writer and executive director of The Kitchen in New York, brought together the work of 12 contemporary artists in direct response and tribute to the cooperative’s work. Russell describes the quilts of Gee’s Bend as family trees. ‘These are maps. These are archival documents,’ she reflected in an interview with ArtReview last year. ‘It’s important for us to not look at them as materials that should be fetishised and consumed through the lens of a static leisure. Rather, they need to be vivified and animated, always.’
Many of the artists featuring in the exhibition transcend the techniques of typical quilting, in which two pieces of fabric are stitched together to enclose an interior cotton stuffing. Instead, they choose to home in on its core principle of storytelling, each piece of fabric a hint at an unseen past, and bring them to life in everything from painting to sculpture. New techniques and forms are also thriving at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, where British artist Hew Locke has introduced a procession of 150 handmade, life-size figures draped in patchwork textiles, marching straight from his Tate Britain Duveen Galleries commission. Inspired by his reflections on the cycles of history and power, his choice of materials embodies these recurring echoes of the past in each square of fabric.
For Korean-Canadian artist Zadie Xa, who featured in The New Bend and recently presented a solo exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Korean patchwork becomes an expression of the inherently collective nature of the craft. Like collage, which plays an equally important role in Xa’s work, quilting draws from multiple, often disparate sources. ‘I’m interested in the women who would take scraps of fabric and make these beautiful textiles together,’ the artist explained in a 2019 interview. Enriched by the many hands behind each quilt, the medium offers a collective model of exchange and dialogue.
In the worlds of fashion and contemporary design, these principles take on new forms, too. Dividing his time between America and Ghana, Basil Kincaid creates vivid, layered textile wall hangings pieced together from salvaged materials. Meanwhile, young and forward-thinking fashion brands, such as London-based Chopova Lowena and Bode in New York, make use of upcycled textiles and patchwork as a key part of their visual identity, in line with an ethos of sustainability and a slower approach to consumption. Marfa Stance, based in LA, launched a collaboration with Gee’s Bend in October 2022, making the collective’s hand-stitched, unique quilts wearable for the first time.
‘Patchworking truly epitomises the beauty of domestic craft, with foundations of re-use, family history, rituals, traditions, hand-techniques, and storytelling,’ says Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Bode’s founding designer. In 2016, the brand launched its first collection of patchwork menswear crafted from well-worn antique quilts and centuries-old tablecloths. A growing continent of designers, Bode Aujla believes, are becoming passionate about the techniques that are disappearing over the generations. ‘Patchwork has an intrinsic value to it, as most examples are entirely unique, incredibly laborious to create, and made by hand. Most importantly, patchwork connects us to sentiments of comfort and to our past.’
For decades, the technical simplicity of the quilt has made it an invaluable medium for the marginalised communities who have found themselves with limited resources. It can be sewn in the smallest of spaces and stowed away, neatly folded, before being opened up to vast proportions. The largest community art project ever made is the Aids Memorial Quilt – created in 1987 by over 100,000 people: this is as powerful a reflection as any of the inclusivity and collaborative potential of the art form. It has just as much of a place, however, in the hands of individuals the world over: a quilt is an invitation to slow down, to reflect, and to remember. As Jess Bailey concludes, ‘Patchwork is for everyone.’
