The Power of Exercising Agency to Master Your Life 

THE GROOVE

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Having agency involves a sense of empowerment, self-determination, and responsibility for your decisions and their consequences. If you exercise your agency, you recognize that you have the capacity to effect change in your circumstances, whether personal, professional, or societal. This includes the ability to set goals, pursue aspirations, overcome obstacles, and advocate for yourself and others.

American artist Faith Ringgold's life and career exemplifies the power of agency in shaping individual and collective narratives, advocating for social change, and creating a more inclusive and equitable society through art and activism.

Born in New York City in 1930, Ringgold pioneered a captivating new art genre, weaving together elements of her African-American heritage to craft vibrant, narrative quilts through paint and fabric. Adding to the famous quilts that she developed in her 65-year career were drawings, prints, performance art, soft-sculptures, and paintings on canvas. She also wrote and illustrated 17 children's books and her own memoirs. Let’s look at the driving forces behind how she mastered her career and employed her agency:

We all face rejection multiple times in our lives. When you reframe rejection as an opportunity for reflection and refinement, you can turn setbacks into steppingstones.

Growing up in Harlem, after graduating from City College of New York first with a bachelor’s in 1955 and then a master’s in art in 1959, Ringgold became a public school teacher while trying to sell her paintings made in the traditional Western canon of landscapes and still lifes the way she had learned in school. While beautiful and well accomplished, these works said nothing about who Ringgold was.

Struggling as a female African American artist in securing gallery representation, Ringgold's encounter with gallery owner Ruth White in 1963 proved to be transformative. When reviewing Ringgold's paintings, White regretfully declined to exhibit her work and told her she couldn’t do it. Reflecting on the meeting with her husband, Burdette Ringgold, whom she had married in 1962, Ringgold realized, "You know something? I think what she's saying is - it's the 1960s, all hell is breaking loose all over, and you're painting flowers and leaves. You can't do that. Your job is to tell your story. Your story has to come out of your life, your environment, who you are, where you come from."

And so Ringgold reframed what could’ve been perceived as a rejection and pivoted, embarking on her groundbreaking American People Series. This new body of work got her noticed, and an invitation from Robert Newman in 1967 for a solo show at his co-op gallery Spectrum injected fresh energy into her artistic journey. With the large space of the gallery transformed into her personal studio for the summer, she seized the opportunity to immerse herself in her craft, liberated from familial duties, and produced monumental masterpieces.

"American People Series #20: Die" marked a turning point in Ringgold’s career. This twelve-foot canvas portrays a chaotic and violent scene of men, women, and children— both Black and white—some brandishing weapons, others covered in blood. The tumultuous composition evokes the power of Picasso's 1937 masterpiece, "Guernica." "Die" became the centerpiece of her debut solo exhibition. "You can't sit around waiting for somebody else to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it. That's the power of being an artist."

The most creative endeavors often stem from a deeply personal connection, sometimes leading back to one's roots. Embracing and drawing inspiration from your heritage, experiences, and unique perspective can infuse your work with authenticity, richness, and depth.

In 1972, Ringgold was in Amsterdam visiting the Rijksmuseum when she stumbled upon a collection of 14th- and 15th-century Tibetan and Nepali paintings that both challenged and inspired her own practice.

Back in New York, Ringgold turned to her mother, Will Posey, to help her work with textiles. Posey was a famed Harlem fashion designer and dressmaker, who while educated at New York’s FIT had learned the art of quilt making from her own mother and grandmother. Ringgold and Posey collaborated on a variety of works made with fabric and in 1980 “Echoes of Harlem,” their first quilt, was born.

The result opened a completely different path for Ringgold, who was now adept enough at quilting to do it on her own and also an excellent painter who was creating Black narratives using acrylic paint on canvas incorporated in the quilt. This is when the artist realized that she possessed a remarkable skill for confronting challenging themes with captivating beauty.

"During that time, I was trying to get my autobiography published, but no one wanted to print my story. In 1983, I began writing stories on my quilts as an alternative. That way, when my quilts were hung up to look at, or photographed for a book, people could still read my stories. They are written the way I write my children's stories — each section written on the quilt is a page."

In 1983, Faith Ringgold unveiled her first story quilt, "Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?" This piece features a grid of whimsical, childlike portraits, each paired with the captivating tale of "Aunt Jemima Blakey" and her children, narrated in lively Black vernacular. The quilt reimagines the derogatory stereotype of Aunt Jemima, portraying her instead as a beautiful and triumphant businesswoman who achieves great success in the restaurant industry.

“In the 60s it became O.K. to be black and do black things, and in the 70s the women's movement taught me to make art from the things that women do." Ringgold not only delved into the treasures of her own ancestry but also made history. It's important to remember that this was the 1980s, an era dominated by the likes of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring, where pop art reigned supreme. Despite this, Ringgold demonstrated remarkable defiance and agency by immersing herself in figure painting, exploring fabric artistry, and prioritizing narrative storytelling, even while the art market showed scant interest in these unconventional approaches.

The rigidity of "it's this or nothing else" can be stifling and limiting. Embracing flexibility and openness to alternative options can lead to greater creativity, innovation, and opportunities for growth.

For Ringgold, using her agency also meant taking full responsibility for her career. Operating outside the New York mainstream, Ringgold enlisted a booking agent and quickly became highly sought after for her exhibitions and lectures, particularly at university campuses across the United States. Her audiences frequently comprised people from diverse academic fields like sociology, psychology and writing, rather than traditional arts backgrounds. This approach garnered Ringgold more than 100 shows across the United States alongside an entirely new fan base.

"They're my alternative spaces," she said. "New York has the idea that it has everything, and it does, but they're not always looking at it. As an artist, you can't sit around waiting… If I don't have an audience in New York, I'll get one outside of it."

By the time of her death in April 2024, Faith Ringgold’s work had been acquired and prominently displayed at MoMA, The Harvard Art Museums, the Whitney, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Met, the Guggenheim and dozens more, not to mention a celebrated retrospective in 2022 at the New Museum with more than 120 works that then traveled to the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Musée Picasso in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Last week, one of her quilts sold at auction for $1,572,000.

Finding alternative spaces to manifest your goals, whether that means geographically, demographically or even culturally, is a necessity for most. It requires creativity, resourcefulness, and a willingness to think outside the box. Start by broadening your perspective and exploring unconventional avenues that align with your aspirations to see where that gets you.

To fully exercise agency in life and work, one must first cultivate a deep sense of self-awareness and purpose. This involves introspection to understand one's values, passions, and aspirations. With clarity on personal goals, you can then take intentional actions to shape your path, making deliberate choices that align with your values and lead towards your desired outcomes. Agency involves taking ownership of your decisions and responsibilities and acknowledging, much in the way that Faith Ringgold did, that every single choice contributes to the overall trajectory of your life and career.

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HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD

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TEDX TALK

Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?

I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.

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