#witch-mask

`...Ringgold began to see painting as simply "a backdrop for something else," which was masks, or "Witches"—heads of weeping women, beaded and fringed and embroidered on fabric, showing the magical power attributed to women, their mouths open to denote the need for women to speak out. Then she began to make portraits of people she had known as a child, most of whom were women. ("I always wondered what they would have been like if they had had the opportunity to develop themselves. They were pretty sharp and skillful people. They knew how to do so many things. Real survivors.") These were portraits in the African sense—"the quality rather than the likeness of a person." Her mother, who of course had known them too, dressed the figures and gave them their "body look." The traditional aspect of women collaborating on art has not escaped Ringgold, whose two daughters (one a writer, one a linguist) are responsible for the skits written for her masks and "Soft People." She firmly believes that "art has gender, that women have their own culture and it needs to be modified, freed, to produce a new, unrepressed female art."`

—from lucy r. lippard—FAITH RINGGOLD'S BLACK, POLITICAL, FEMINIST ART—FROM THE CENTER—1976.