The New Bend.

About

Curated by Legacy Russell, Executive Director & Chief Curator of The Kitchen, ‘The New Bend’ travels from Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles to Somerset. The exhibition brings together 12 contemporary artists working in the raced, classed and gendered traditions of quilting and textile practice. The artists featured are Anthony Akinbola, Dawn Williams Boyd, Myrlande Constant, Ferren Gipson, Tomashi Jackson, Basil Kincaid, Eric N. Mack, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Tuesday Smillie, Rachel Eulena Williams, Qualeasha Wood and Zadie Xa.

Their unique visual vernacular exists in tender dialogue with, and in homage to, the contributions of the Gee’s Bend Alabama quilters – Black American women in collective cooperation and creative economic production – and their enduring legacy as a radical meeting place, a prompt and as intergenerational inspiration. This exhibition acknowledges the work of Gee’s Bend quilters such as Sarah Benning (born 1933), Missouri Pettway (1902 – 1981), Lizzie Major (1922 – 2011), Sally Bennett Jones (1944 – 1988), Mary Lee Bendolph (born 1935) and so many more, as central to expanded histories of abstraction and modernism.

Coinciding with the traveling exhibition, the gallery presents ‘Community Lab: Threads of Connection’ – an interactive space that fosters social connections through artmaking, evolving from Los Angeles to Somerset. Alongside a range of practical workshops, the Community Lab provides opportunities to learn more about the Gee’s Bend quilters through an extensive timeline of the Alabama region and documentary provided by Souls Grown Deep.