Walking into the Renwick Gallery’s latest exhibition, We Gather at the Edge, the first thing that strikes visitors is not just the vibrant colors or intricate stitching — it’s the power of the stories woven into each quilt. The exhibit, which features 33 quilts from Carolyn Mazloomi’s collection, honors the Black quilting tradition as a means of storytelling, resistance and connection.
Mazloomi, an aerospace engineer turned quilter, dedicated her life to preserving African American quilts. In 1985, she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network to connect artists working outside the mainstream and make visible the accomplishments of those artists through professional galleries
“Sometimes the weight of living on this planet as a woman, we have to be reminded of who we are,” Mazloomi said on the Smithsonian American Art Museum website. “Quilts help to serve that purpose of reminding women about their power.”
Aleia Brown, the exhibition curator and a professor at East Carolina University, emphasized how Black women have historically gathered outside traditional art spaces to create and preserve their histories.
“These quilts remind us of what we were told to forget and inspire us to imagine new worlds,” Brown said in an interview with The Eagle. “What happens when we gather? We create joy, we remember and we inspire new possibilities.”
Each quilt featured in “We Gather at the Edge” represents a piece of history, memory or activism. “In My Akuabaa Form” by Myrah Brown Green reinvents the traditional American-style flying geese quilt pattern by infusing it with African symbolism to honor the Greensboro Four — students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who, in 1960, staged a sit-in at the segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“She Africanized the design, turning it into a symbol of amulet-carrying and protection for those involved with the Civil Rights Movement,” Brown said.
Lauren Austin’s “Birds Are My People” intertwines patchwork techniques with tie-dye to address environmental justice initiatives using Ghanaian Adinkra symbols to convey interdependence.
“This quilt imagines a world where we live interdependently, rather than extractively,” Brown said, referencing the Ghanaian symbol Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu, which represents the concept of “unity in diversity,” embedded in the piece.
More than just an artistic exhibition, “We Gather at the Edge” is a call to slow down and reflect on the act of gathering.
“The last quilt visitors see is about possibilities in gathering, about taking a moment step away from the pressures of racial capitalism and simply being with one another,” Brown said.
Through this collection, the Renwick Gallery honors Black women quilters’ artistry, labor and legacy “not just as artisans, but as keepers of our shared histories,” as Brown puts it.
This article was edited by Abigail Hatting, Maya Cederlund, Tyler Davis and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Olivia Citarella.
