Quilts have existed as domestic textiles for many years and across many cultures. Made for warmth, comfort, or ceremony, these objects have also conveyed important ideas and emotional connections—memorializing people and events, celebrating marriages and births, and sometimes even providing shrouds for burial. Today, contemporary artists recognize the rich potential for meaning embedded in the materials and techniques of traditional quilt making, and rework them in unique and often unexpected ways.

While they can be functional, for the most part, contemporary art quilts place an emphasis on the content, reflecting the experiences and ideas of their makers; it is the artist, rather than the blocked pattern, that determines the design. Unblocked: Improvisation and Identity in Contemporary Quilts brings together a diverse group of artists whose quilts tell stories, express identity, celebrate community, further social justice, and engage in formal design and color investigations. Comfortable with improvisation, these artists use materials that are readily available—often discarded or donated clothing and domestic textiles—and work intuitively, without a structured plan.

“Unblocking” is the process of removing an obstruction, freeing or releasing emotional energy. In social media, “Unblocking” is restoring access to a user’s voice—granting permission to express ideas freely. For this exhibition, “unblocked” is also a play on words, suggesting that contemporary artists achieve deeper engagement with their work when they move beyond the traditional use of repetitive blocks and patterns to compose quilts. Freed from the limitations of the block, their designs are often irregular and may extend beyond the rectangular edges of a traditional quilt.

Unblocked is co-curated by Mary Birmingham and Jennifer Wroblewski. Participating artists include:

Sherri Lynn Wood, Elizabeth Brandt, Zak Foster, Coulter Fussell, Chawne Kimber, Basil Kincaid, Kwesi O. Kwarteng, Krystle Lemonias, Sarah Nishiura, Melanie Tuazon

For more information, visit the Hunterdon Art Museum website.

Image: PFF458 – Chawne Kimber, First Freedom (Snuggleshott), 2013

Featuring over 30 paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, and fiber works from ca. 1900 to the present, Queens, Gods, and Devotees foregrounds earthly and divine greatness, and their associated devotional objects and ritual practices. Spanning continents, cultures, and eras, many of these images of exalted figures and concepts related to spirituality and worship are specific to the Black American experience, or are re-imagined in a Black cultural context. References to Greek mythology, the Judeo-Christian tradition, ancient cultures, and traditional African spiritual practices appear alongside one another, offering viewers the opportunity to find parallels and distinctions in how greatness, power, and majesty have been represented in African American art, as well as how reverence and veneration have been envisioned.

Celebrated figures from the Bible as well as powerful religious and mythological figures derived from African and ancient traditions appear throughout the galleries. Contemporary Black men and women are often elevated as sacred in their daily lives, or are engaged in spiritual practices derived from a range of African and ancient traditions. In several of the works on view, the visual language of abstraction addresses ancient African spiritual systems, the cosmos, and the afterlife, or communicates perspectives on culture and history, which are often intertwined with notions of prayer and worship. The wide variety of cultures, histories, and traditions that these artists collectively draw upon in their work calls attention to the universality of devotional human experience across time and place.

Curated by Susanna Gold, PhD, this exhibition includes 20th-c work by celebrated artists including Romare Bearden, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Richmond Barthé, Betye Saar, John Biggers, and others. Among the artists of the 21st-century selections are Willie Cole, Shinique Smith, Tawny Chatmon, Imo Nse Imeh, and Sharif Bey, as well as local area artists Barbara Bullock, Curlee Holton, Lavett Ballard, Sterling Shaw, and Claes Gabriel. 

For more information, visit the Maguire Art Museum website.

Image: PFF564 – Tawny Chatmon, Iconography/A Hopeful Truth, 2022-2023