FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Veda Silva (510) 637-0200
December 14, 2023
The African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO) first international touring exhibition, “Black American Strip Quilts and Their West African Textile Roots,” will conclude with its final installation at AAMLO. The Artists’ Reception is December 16 at 2:00 pm. The exhibition will continue during the excitement of the Kwanzaa Holiday Season in late December, on through the Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday commemorations of January 2024, into the Black History Month activities in February 2024 with a special focus on celebrating African Americans and the Arts.
“Black American Strip Quilts and Their West African Textile Roots” features works by twenty- two fiber artists who are members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland (AAQGO). “The Guild has stayed true to its mission. First, it preserves and continues the tradition of quilting", said Marsha Carter, who coordinated the participation by members of the organization. “Second, it promotes fellowship among interested persons regarding all aspects of quilting. Third, the guild contributes to the knowledge and appreciation of quilting and fine art quilts. And fourth, it sponsors and supports quilting activities through its meetings, and hosts special events in the community."
During 2025 the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland (AAQGO) will mark 25 years of creating art, exhibiting textile creations, providing public programs, and offering educational opportunities to young people. “We are excited and have started planning our Silver Jubilee celebration,” said Bamidele Agbasegbe Demerson, chief curator at AAMLO. “We are so fortunate to have such stellar artists in our exhibition. Their masterfully quilted creations—as bedcovers, coverlets, table runners, wall hangings, and works of fine art—allow us to examine cultural memories of ancestral Africa that have been encapsulated in an ongoing social process of ‘creolization.’ AAQGO is a great resource in our community.”
“The production of quilted bedcovers—a domestic craft practiced in Europe—was later transferred to the British colonies that would become the United States of America. But the quilt cannot be simply characterized as the cultural diffusion of an artifact from European America to African America,” said Demerson. “The cultural memories of West African narrow bands that are sewn selvage-to-selvage remerge in the patchwork ‘strips’ (also called ‘strings’) that are stitched edge-to-edge to create the quilt top. These “Basic geometric patterns—squares, rectangles, diamond shapes, triangles, circles, and lunettes—were decorative symbolic motifs in African material culture that were also found in European American quilting traditions. In fact, the White American designs camouflaged the African motifs whose meanings were no longer remembered, thereby indicating that the process of creolization had started.”
“Black American Strip Quilts and Their West African Textile Roots” opened at the National Museum in Accra, Ghana during that country’s biennial Panafest and Emancipation Day Observances held in July and August 2023. During that time, many people from the African diaspora in the United States visit Ghana. Demerson indicated that it is important for Africans at home, and descendants in the diaspora, to know that memories of ancestral Africa are to be found as resilient manifestations in the material culture of the diaspora. The exhibition then traveled to Southern University at New Orleans Museum of Art (SUNOMA) and was on view from September through November to coincide with the Fall Semester.
About AAMLO
The mission of the African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO) is to discover, preserve, interpret, and share the historical and cultural experiences of African Americans in Northern California for present and future generations. A multifaceted institution, AAMLO is simultaneously a museum, an archive, a non-circulating library, and a seed lending library. The hours of operation are: Monday-Thursday and Saturday, 10:00 am through 5:30 pm; and Friday, 12:00 pm-5:30 pm. You are invited to visit AAMLO online.
About the Oakland Public Library
The Oakland Public Library is a part of the City of Oakland in California and has been in existence since 1878. Locations include 16 neighborhood branches, a Main Library, a Second Start Adult Literacy Program, the Oakland Tool Lending Library, and the African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO). The Oakland Public Library empowers all people to explore, connect, and grow. oaklandlibrary.org
