Carolyn Mazloomi quilt depicts timeline of Black American history
Claire Oliver Gallery presents Chasing Freedom, a new major work by Carolyn Mazloomi, on view through May 23, 2026, on the second floor of the gallery’s Harlem brownstone. The exhibition centers on a single monumental quilt, the largest work Mazloomi has made to date, which unfolds as a sweeping visual timeline of Black American history. It is the first of two planned quilts that together will cover the most significant milestones in the Black American experience, from the brutality of enslavement and the courage of those who sought liberation, through the civil rights and Black power movements, to the ongoing pursuit of freedom and equality in the present day.
“As both a historian and a quilt maker, I use textile art to document and preserve cultural memory and to tell stories that might otherwise be forgotten,” said Mazloomi. “The pursuit of justice and freedom like the quilt itself, is built stitch by stitch, generation by generation.”
Chasing Freedom is a narrative quilt in the fullest sense. Through stitched imagery, and symbolic storytelling, Mazloomi structures the work as a series of historical vignettes, each panel a distinct scene of resistance, perseverance, or transformation. Viewers are invited to move physically and emotionally through the chronicle, engaging with the layered histories embedded in each section of cloth. Topics include the civil rights movement, the Black power movement, Black achievement, and contemporary issues affecting Black Americans.
The work is rendered in Mazloomi’s signature approach: drawings transferred to cotton fabric, built up through the labor-intensive technique of appliqué, with patchwork borders celebrating the broader quilting tradition from which her practice emerges.
The presentation arrives at a moment when the histories Mazloomi documents are under active threat. With Black history curricula restricted or eliminated in more than 30 states, and federal arts and education funding facing deep cuts, Chasing Freedom performs precisely the work that public institutions are increasingly unable to do: bearing witness, preserving record, and insisting on the full complexity of the American story.
“Art is truth, and my quilts bear witness,” Mazloomi has said. “They are evidence, testimony, and a lived record of American history.”
Chasing Freedom follows Mazloomi’s celebrated debut gallery exhibition Whole Cloth: Narratives in Black and White at Claire Oliver Gallery in fall 2024, and the two-person exhibition Certain Restrictions Do Apply with Sharon Kerry-Harlan, which opened the gallery’s 2026 program in January. Together these exhibitions have established Mazloomi as a central figure in the broader critical conversation around textile art as a vehicle for historical documentation and social justice.
Claire Oliver Gallery
2288 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard
New York, NY 10030
www.claireoliver.com
Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
ABOUT CAROLYN MAZLOOMI
Based in West Chester, Ohio, Carolyn Mazloomi is an artist, curator, and writer. Her practice is rooted in the quilting tradition, using textiles — a personal and metaphorical material — to communicate the stories of individuals who have made significant contributions to social justice and landmark events that have shaped American history.
Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1948, Mazloomi trained as an aerospace engineer before teaching herself to quilt in the 1970s.
She is the founder of the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles and the Women of Color Quilters Network, and over the course of her career has curated exhibitions of African American quilts at more than 35 museums and published 15 books.
In 2014 she was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor in the United States for traditional arts.
ABOUT CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY
Claire Oliver Gallery is located in Central Harlem in a four-story brownstone. For over 30 years, Claire Oliver Gallery has showcased and celebrated artwork, with a focus on work by women and people of color, which transcends and challenges the traditional art historical canon
