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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.
Love Letter 5
Gio Swaby (Born in Nassau, Bahamas, born in 1991; resides and works in Toronto, Canada)
American
2021
Medium/Technique
Printed cotton, sewn onto canvas
Dimensions
Length x width: 213.4 × 96.5 cm (84 × 38 in.)
Credit Line
The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection
Accession Number2021.447
OUT ON LOAN
On display at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, June 28, 2024 – September 29, 2024
On display at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, June 28, 2024 – September 29, 2024
ClassificationsTextiles
Gio Swaby is an emerging multimedia artist whose work in textiles expresses what the artist describes as "Black joy ... a form of resistance to white supremacy." Like other examples in the Love Letter series, Gio Swaby has sewn a length of dark blue printed cotton to canvas using a long-arm quilting machine. The artists then sewed cut pieces of cloth to this dark ground, like a collage, and finished the work by stretching it on a wooden frame. This series of silhouetted figures stands out for the artist's masterful use of pattern and color. Before cutting any fabric or threading her sewing machine, Gio Swaby chooses a subject among family and friends, many of whom are a part of the Bahamian community in Toronto. She chooses to work in textiles because this material evokes the joyful and loving way that she experienced the woman in her family make clothes for others. Starting with her own identity as a Black woman and acknowledging the reciprocity of love among Black women in her life, Gio Swaby frames her work as "a love letter to all those women... creating space for us to be us."
Artist Statement (Pierre-Antoine Louis, “A Love Letter to Black Women," New York Times, April 10, 2021):
"The pieces that I made for the exhibition (Both Sides of the Sun, Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem, NY, April 10-June 5, 2021) are three different series. I have five from a series called "Love Letter" and these works are large, more silhouetted pieces with a lot of pattern and color. The "Love Letter" is expressing my love toward my friends and my family in my life and other Black women. Through the pandemic and also just throughout my life, I've just felt an overwhelming amount of support from my family and my friends. I wanted to create this work to extend my gratitude and thanks to them. For me, I'm thinking though my work as an idea of visiting. So the work itself mainly is not necessarily the pieces that I'm making, but that act of thinking about how we've cultivated love and care between one another, and these pieces are a tribute to that."
Artist Statement (Pierre-Antoine Louis, “A Love Letter to Black Women," New York Times, April 10, 2021):
"The pieces that I made for the exhibition (Both Sides of the Sun, Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem, NY, April 10-June 5, 2021) are three different series. I have five from a series called "Love Letter" and these works are large, more silhouetted pieces with a lot of pattern and color. The "Love Letter" is expressing my love toward my friends and my family in my life and other Black women. Through the pandemic and also just throughout my life, I've just felt an overwhelming amount of support from my family and my friends. I wanted to create this work to extend my gratitude and thanks to them. For me, I'm thinking though my work as an idea of visiting. So the work itself mainly is not necessarily the pieces that I'm making, but that act of thinking about how we've cultivated love and care between one another, and these pieces are a tribute to that."
DescriptionSilhoutted female figure rendered in layers of cut out printed cloth in a range of patterns and colors sewn to canvas that is entirely covered with a length of dark blue printed cloth.
Provenance2021, sold by Claire Oliver Gallery, New York to the MFA. (Accession date: June 16, 2021)