Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
in ‘Inherited Threads’, Tate Modern, London
7 December 2022
Aolar Carson Mosely, Log Cabin, c.1950, cotton, twill, cotton hopsacking and corduroy, 205.7 x 215.9 cm (81 x 85 in). Courtesy: Souls Grown Deep Foundation and Alison Jacques, London © Aolar Mosely / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London
Alison Jacques is pleased to announce the inclusion of Gee’s Bend quiltmakers Mary Lee Bendolph, Annie Mae Young, and Aolar Mosely in a new display ‘Inherited Threads’ at Tate Modern, London, that explores the different ways that artists have demonstrated how textiles can hold memories and histories.
The Gee’s Bend quiltmakers are an intergenerational community of African American women living in the isolated hamlet of Boykin (Gee’s Bend), Alabama. Many of the quiltmakers are direct descendants of the enslaved people forced to labour at the cotton plantation established there by Joseph Gee in 1816. Though the Gee’s Bend quilts were originally made by necessity as bedspreads and blankets, the tradition has continued and evolved with new generations taking up the practice.