“The New Bend” Exhibition

Hauser & Wirth (548 W 22nd St.)

This event has ended.

Curated by Legacy Russell, Executive Director & Chief Curator of The Kitchen, ‘The New Bend’ brings together 12 contemporary artists working in the raced, classed, and gendered traditions of quilting and textile practice. Their unique visual vernacular exists in tender dialogue with, and in homage to, the contributions of the Gee’s Bend Alabama quilters and their enduring legacy – as a radical meeting place, a prompt, and as intergenerational inspiration. ‘The New Bend’ recognizes Gee’s Bend quilters – Black American women in collective cooperation and creative economic production – such as Sarah Benning (b. 1933), Missouri Pettway (1902-1981), Lizzie Major (1922-2011), Sally Bennett Jones (1944-1988), Mary Lee Bendolph (b.1935), and so many more, as central to expanded histories of Abstraction and Modernism. Seeing the expressive modes of cutting, stitching, splicing, and remixing articulated here as queered performative and editorial acts reframe an understanding of the digital. Through their work, Anthony Akinbola, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Dawn Williams Boyd, Diedrick Brackens, Tuesday Smillie, Tomashi Jackson, Genesis Jerez, Basil Kincaid, Eric N. Mack, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Qualeasha Wood, and Zadie Xa propose electrifying new directions, adding a promising new bend in this journey. Learn more about this history and support Gee’s Bend quilters by visiting www.soulsgrowndeep.org.