Quilt with appliqué, including African printed fabrics, buttons and textile paint, 2019. 2286x1676 mm; 90x66 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "90x66" in ink on a fabric label, verso.
Provenance: collection of the artist, New York.
Miriam Makeba depicts Zenzile Miriam Makeba (1932 – 2008), the famous South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. A proponent of Afropop, jazz, and world music, Makeba became a leading international figure in the fight against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa, beginning in the 1960s. With her friend and mentor Harry Belafonte, she received a Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording for her 1965 album An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. She was later denied entry to the US after her 1968 marriage to the former Black Panther and political activist Kwayme Ture (born Stokley Carmichael). After living in exile in Guinea and Belgium, Makeba returned to her native South Africa in 1990 with the release of Nelson Mandela and lift of the ban on the ANC.
Michael Cummings is widely regarded as one of the nation's leading African American quilters. A Los Angeles native, he moved to New York City in 1970 and became friends with Romare Bearden. He experimented with collage in various media, and by 1975, moved to strictly fabric. Today, he lives and works in Harlem. Quilts by Cummings are in many institutional collections including the American Craft Museum, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the California African American Museum, the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Cummings's works were recently acquired by the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. He was commissioned by Hillary Clinton to create a quilt for the Year of the Women; the quilt Shirley Chisholm for President was recently exhibited in Womens' Voices, Women's Rights, Women's Votes at the Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, AR. Cummings also was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage fellowship in 2023.
