The Shroud Series: Quilt Shroud

This unusually long quilt features purple and blue batik fabric patches applied onto a plain peach colored fabric. The batik also forms the quilt’s backing and binding. At the center of the quilt, the largest patch bears the image of a person talking or singing. Perhaps the griot-like figure is telling a story about the surrounding images, which feature multicolored fish, bananas, gourds, and abstract designs. Some of the images repeat on the back of the quilt. A talking drum, or Dundun in Yoruba, is prominent among the abstract designs bordering a series of three rectangles in the center back.

Fay Pullen Fairbrother (1947-1997) created this quilt in the early 1990s as part of an art installation called The Shroud Series, which explored racial violence in the United States. Entitled In the Beginning, this quilt represents elements of African life prior to enslavement in the Americas.