Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #2: Come On and Dance with Me

Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #2: Come On and Dance with Me

Faith Ringgold’s Jazz Stories quilt series spotlights women musicians and in Come On and Dance with Me, the high-spirited singer embodies the lyrics with passion and joy. Across her imagery Ringgold centers the importance of African diasporic creativity to both historic and contemporary society, pushing back on limiting narratives that claim these cultures are marginal. Her rebellion extends to engagements with quilts and textiles – materials that are still often overlooked within modernist histories. Originating as a way to bypass censorship, Ringgold’s quilts utilize a domestic, disarming medium to carry nuanced messages and stories that range from deeply interpersonal to cultural and political. Through these masterful artworks, Ringgold adds immeasurably to both the African-American tradition of pictorial story quilts and the canon of modernist and contemporary art.

Lyrics for all of Ringgold’s jazz series can be found in the Faith Ringgold Study Room.

Faith Ringgold

2004

Acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, quilted

Loan courtesy of the artist and ACA Galleries