Dindga McCannon grew up in Harlem and developed her early practice in the 1960s during the Harlem Renaissance movement. She joined the Weusi Artist Collective and later formed—with Faith Ringgold, Kay Brown, and 12 other young, Black women artists—the collective “Where We At” Black Women Artists Inc. (WWA) to specifically address the lack of Black women represented within the feminist art movement. McCannon became a prominent figure in the wider Black Arts Movement that took place from 1965 to 1975, and to many, her importance has never been in question. While raising two children, McCannon has worked prolifically as a fiber artist, muralist, and educator to foreground the experiences of Black women.
The mainstream art world’s delayed recognition of McCannon, now 75, follows a familiar pattern—an outstanding Black woman artist who, despite her achievements, was ignored by the canon for far too long. This has been changing for McCannon since her participation in the Brooklyn Museum’s 2017 group exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution.” McCannon’s first solo gallery show in the United States took place just last year at Fridman Gallery in New York. And as she prepares to stage her first European solo show at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London, an international audience will soon get the chance to become more intimately familiar with the last 50 years of her artmaking.
McCannon’s oeuvre ranges from intricately detailed quilts and sumptuous textile works to dazzling wearable art, all of which wrest traditional needlework—which she learned from her mother and grandmother—from the domestic domain and into a radical new terrain. Themes of sisterhood, solidarity, and the importance of marking women’s achievements in history are salient throughout the diverse forms of McCannon’s practice.
