On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions
THESE ARE NOT QUILTS. Images of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in the moments before he assassinated NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers (1925-1963) in the driveway of his Jackson, Miss., home or the decapitation of a journalist with a bloodied sign reading “Freedom of Speech Denied Worldwide” lying near his severed head, are not the purview of traditional quilting. These are cloth paintings produced by Dawn Williams Boyd using methods of quilt making and collage. “I come from a long line of women who sewed, so fabric surrounds me,” Boyd has said. The New Jersey-born, Atlanta-based artist also incorporates acrylic paint and a variety of embellishments, including sequins, beads, cowry shells, lace, and silk ribbons. Boyd has been developing her artistic practice for more than four decades. Since 2001, she has “painted” pictures with fabric creating detailed, layered, candid, and provocative images documenting historic events and contemporary scenes in the American narrative—from 1960s civil rights protests to 21st century police abuse. For “Dawn Williams Boyd: Cloth Paintings,” her online exhibition at Fort Gansevoort, Boyd also invokes Hurricane Katrina, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and Angola State Prison, the Louisiana penitentiary housed on a former cotton plantation that continues to produce crops on land worked by the incarcerated. Other images embrace femininity and celebrate the Black female body. Another offers a graphic reinterpretation of the American flag. This last work, titled “The Trump Era: Trump’s America” (2020), symbolically divides the country into two America’s—one white, the other colored. CT
“Dawn Williams Boyd: Cloth Paintings” is organized by writer and critic Sasha Bonét, online at Fort Gansevoort, New York, N.Y., from Sept. 29-Nov. 7, 2020
TOP IMAGE: DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Baptizing Our Children in a River of Blood,” 2017 (assorted fabrics, 36 x 48 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Human Rights in the New Millenium: Freedom Of Speech,” 2016 (assorted fabrics, cotton floss, acrylic paints, inkjet printed fabrics. Appliqued by machine. Embroidered, embellished and quilted by hand, 49.5 x 49.5 inches ). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Waiting for Medgar, Jackson, MS, 1963,” 2004 (mixed media, 80 x 56.5 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “The Trump Era: Trump’s America,” 2020 (assorted fabrics, 59.5 x 59.75 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Six Feet of Water: Evangeline, LA. 1927,” 2016 (mixed media, 70 x 70 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “The Trump Era: Puerto Rico 2019,” 2019 (assorted fabrics, 60 x60 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “The Trump Era: Racism No Longer Has the Decency to Hide Its Face,” 2019 (assorted fabrics, 60 x 60). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “The Trump Era: Incarceration,” 2019 (assorted fabric, 60 x 60 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Three Marys: Freedom Riders,” 2012 (54 X 89 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Sankofa,” 2010 (mixed media, 73 x 51 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Nurture,” 2017 (assorted fabrics, 48 x 72 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Bad Blood: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments – Macon County, AL 1932-1972,” 2019 (mixed media, 53 x 68 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “Peaches and Evangeline: Bibbs County FL. 1942,” 2004 (mixed media, 72 x 53.5 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
DAWN WILLIAMS BOYD, “We Shall Overcome,” 2017 (assorted fabrics, 69 x 46 inches). | © Dawn Williams Boyd, Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort
FIND MORE about Dawn Williams Boyd on her website
