Faith Ringgold And Betye Saar Prints Together For First Time In New University Of Maryland Exhibition

Anyone with more than a passing interest in contemporary art knows Faith Ringgold and Betty Saar. Ringgold (b. 1930; Harlem) is known for her quilts, “Tar Beach,” the first of her award winning children’s books, and for American People Series #20: Die (1967) which set art-world tongues wagging when it was hung next to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at a renovated Museum of Modern Art in 2019. Saar (b. 1926; Los Angeles) is known for 1972’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, one of the most important individual works of 20^th century art, and her pioneering contributions to the Assemblage movement and use of found objects.

Anyone with less than a profound interest in contemporary art will likely be unfamiliar with either artist’s printmaking, let alone how their mutual, decade’s long commitment to the medium mirrored and diverged from one another. That’s where a new exhibition at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park steps in. “RINGGOLD | SAAR: Meeting on the Matrix” marks the first time artwork from the two giants are featured together in an exhibition devoted to print media.

The exhibition came together in an unusual fashion. During a fall 2022 graduate course in the university’s Department of Art History and Archaeology centered on the history of Black printmaking, Professor Jordana Moore Saggese challenged students to investigate an understudied medium and its intersections with an understudied group of makers. The class was additionally tasked with finding a way to present what they learned researching the project with the public via exhibition. Students developed and pitched ideas for the show, sought display objects from both UMD and outside collections, and designed the show from checklist to install in collaboration with Driskell Center staff.

“When doing research for the show, we were immediately interested in focusing on Black women artists who are often left out of mainstream histories of printmaking,” PhD student and exhibition co-curator Cléa Massiani told Forbes.com. “Faith Ringgold’s bold prints then caught our attention and we realized that both her and Betye Saar were represented in the Driskell Center collection exclusively through their prints which gave us an interesting perspective.”

“Meeting on the Matrix” places the prints of these two artists in thematic and formal conversation to cast each other’s work in a new, dynamic light while simultaneously emphasizing the singular power of each artist’s contributions to the medium.

Exhibiting Ringgold and Saar side-by-side makes sense. Both are Black women, in their 90s, icons as well as “mothers, teachers, part-time and full-time workers, feminists, Black civil rights activists and keepers of family histories,” as described by a website the students created to support and expand the reach of the presentation.

Their approaches to artmaking have been shared for more than a half-century, too.

“Both artists are rooted in an experimental and interdisciplinary approach to materials. The exhibition, for example, highlights Ringgold’s works in printmaking on both paper and fabric,” Saggese told Forbes.com. “We have examples of Betye Saar’s works in assemblage and sculpture that we have sourced from private lenders in addition to the prints we have at the Driskell Center. Visitors to the show will see how each artist explores a theme–jazz in the case of Ringgold or cosmology in the case of Saar–across media.”

Made clear in the exhibition via printmaking, a medium they are not best known for, is their supreme talent in whatever they touch and a boundless artistic curiosity.

“The determination to work across media is striking,” Massiani said. “Printmaking in Saar and Ringgold’s case feels like a learning experiment, a platform to explore, to engage their creativity through a defined process oriented medium.”

“The Matrix” refers to the printmaking surface which transfers ink onto paper or fabric, a site of possibilities for experimentation, storytelling and activism both incorporated. Here, they diverge.

“Faith Ringgold works in series. Defined and straightforward bodies of work rise from her side of the exhibit,” Massiani explains. “Saar’s work is more sporadic. Her prints do not necessarily have a specific aesthetic, but change and evolve over the years.”

Kudos to the students for achieving what some never do in a lifetime, breaking new ground, looking at a pair of legends and finding something fresh to say about them, a connection not previously made bringing them into richer focus.

“The legacy of these artists, paving the way for others like them, seemed essential to finally put at the forefront,” Massiani said. “Saar and Ringgold’s career, indubitably, embodies societal struggles and challenges, and printmaking was an entryway for these conversations.”

The exhibition opened at the Driskell Center January 26 and can be seen through May 22, 2023.