Adia Millett: Wisdom Keepers: ICA San Jose

Adia Millett: Wisdom Keepers

Institute of Contemporary Art San José

September 16, 2023 - February 18, 2024

This new body of work is a response to an in-depth look at the African American quilt collection at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The artist is inspired by the narratives that recycled fabrics and fibers tell and by the resource sharing, community building and mutual care that these masterpieces brought into the world. Millett’s quilted works in Wisdom Keepers combine textiles from her collection — passed down from family, gifted by friends, donated by Bay Area quilters and weavers.

Totemic portraits in four works on paper are allegorical representations of the four cardinal directions and phases of life. Their colors and abstract forms are reflected in Millett’s glass shields. Created in collaboration with Bullseye Studio, these fragile wall-hung sculptures recall the form of woven African shields.

In her four Quilted Warriors, colorful and patterned quilts are lined with feathers and draped over mannequins, each figure representing nature’s four basic elements: air, water, fire, and earth. Millett’s work extends the long-held idea that art is a weapon, but her warriors are peacekeepers who do not move. Writes Jacqueline Francis, “Millett suggests that the actions of artists and warriors run parallel to each other. In every society, artists and warriors have roles to play, and the latter group’s is an outsized projection. Quilted Warriors provokes us to rethink the ratio and its terms, for artists engage in critical struggles to convey ideas, set out across the battlefield of culture.”