CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS DO APPLY: CAROLYN MAZLOOMI AND SHARON KERRY-HARLAN AT CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY
Claire Oliver Gallery presents Certain Restrictions Do Apply, a major textile exhibition bringing together new works by Carolyn Mazloomi and Sharon Kerry-Harlan, two pivotal figures in the redefinition of quilting and textile art as conceptually driven, narrative, and politically engaged practices. On view from January 9 to March 7, 2026, the exhibition inaugurates the gallery’s 2026 program and features nine new works, marking the artists’ first joint presentation in New York.
The exhibition is grounded in a personal and professional relationship that spans several decades. While Mazloomi and Kerry-Harlan operate through distinct visual languages and formal strategies, they share a common understanding of fiber as a narrative device and a tool for historical inquiry. Their works draw on the histories of African American pioneers, collective memory, and cultural genealogies, radically expanding the semantic field of the quilt by moving beyond reductive interpretations of it as a domestic practice or women’s craft and reaffirming it as a site of critical reflection and identity formation.
Within Certain Restrictions Do Apply, textiles become a space of symbolic layering in which issues of race, belonging, cultural transmission, and memory construction intersect. As Carolyn Mazloomi emphasizes, the quilt embodies a deeply human dimension: it incorporates time, labor, and physical touch, functioning as a material archive of lives and stories that have often been marginalized. The figures and narratives that emerge in her work are not merely depicted but are literally stitched into the fabric of the piece itself, transforming the textile into a vehicle of testimony.
Sharon Kerry-Harlan approaches memory as a non-linear and stratified process. Through her use of fabric, she creates surfaces capable of retaining echoes of the past—familial, cultural, ancestral—while simultaneously allowing space for transformation and reinterpretation. Her works function as transitional sites, where what must be preserved enters into dialogue with the possibility of change.
Mazloomi’s practice is distinguished by its deep grounding in textile history and by a sustained commitment to social documentation and cultural activism. Founder of the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles and the Women of Color Quilters Network, as well as author of numerous foundational publications, she has played a decisive role in securing recognition of the quilt as a contemporary art form within institutional discourse. Kerry-Harlan, for her part, has developed a distinctive material investigation characterized by rust-dyed surfaces, a sophisticated decorative language, and the use of found textiles, resulting in compositions in which ancestral dimensions coexist with an urban sensibility.
As noted by Claire Oliver, founder of the gallery, Mazloomi and Kerry-Harlan are among the most significant voices in narrative textile art today. The exhibition not only celebrates their individual trajectories but also makes visible the creative dialogue, mutual trust, and artistic respect that have sustained their practices over time. Their collaboration, rooted in an ongoing exchange of ideas and support, amplifies the power of the works on view and lends this first joint exhibition in New York a particular historical significance.
Taken together, the works presented form a complex relational field: a dialogue that unfolds between artwork and viewer, as well as between two artists who have influenced one another, acknowledged each other’s paths, and remained united by a shared purpose. Through the language of stitched and constructed cloth, Certain Restrictions Do Apply affirms the power of art as a means of preserving memory, reaffirming identity, and enacting cultural resistance.
WHO IS CAROLYN MAZLOOMI
Carolyn Mazloomi, who lives and works in West Chester, Ohio, is an artist, curator, and writer. Her practice is deeply rooted in the quilting tradition and employs textiles—a material that is both personal and metaphorical—as a means of communicating the stories of individuals who have made significant contributions to social justice, as well as landmark events that have shaped American history. She is the founder of the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles and the Women of Color Quilters Network, and serves on the board of Studio Art Quilt Associates and the Alliance for American Quilters.
Over the course of her career, Mazloomi has held solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries across the United States, including the Los Angeles Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kenyon College, Gambier, OH; Kent State University, Kent, OH; Malcom Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, OH; University of Michigan, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Ann Arbor, MI; and the Quilters Hall of Fame, Marion, IN.
Her work is included in major public collections such as the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, AL; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, OH; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY; National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN; National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Quilters Hall of Fame Museum, Madison, IN; as well as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of African American Culture and History, Washington, D.C., among others. She is the author of numerous books, most recently Visioning Human Rights in the New Millennium (2019), Yours for Race and Country: Reflections on the Life of Colonel Charles Young (2019), We Who Believe in Freedom (2020), We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism (2021), and Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West (2022).
WHO IS SHARON KERRY-HARLAN
Sharon Kerry-Harlan (born 1951, Miami, FL) is a visual artist who lives and works between Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and Hollywood, Florida. Raised in a family of artists, she learned quilting techniques from her mother and principles of design and abstraction from her uncle, an artist and designer. She integrates traditional quilting methods with contemporary approaches to fabric manipulation, producing her signature large-scale, monochromatic, rust-dyed textile works for which she is widely recognized.
Kerry-Harlan’s textile works, along with her mixed-media collages, paintings, and figurative objects—such as the Black Eyed Pea dolls—are deeply informed by issues of race, history, and the socio-political landscape. Her practice centers on the creation of her own textile patterns and fabrics, sometimes incorporating found or inherited materials into compositions that balance geometric forms, figurative elements, and intricate patterning. Drawing inspiration from her African diasporic heritage, the rhythm of contemporary metropolitan life, and the interplay between historical narratives and current events, Kerry-Harlan positions herself as a keeper and interpreter of information and memory, crafting visual narratives that convey multifaceted perspectives. Her work transcends temporal boundaries, activating an ongoing dialogue between past and present.
Sharon Kerry-Harlan earned a BA from Marquette University and studied art at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and has been exhibited at numerous national and international institutions, including the Harn Museum (Gainesville, FL), the Racine Art Museum (Racine, WI), the Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA), the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center (Wilberforce, OH), and the California State Museum (Sacramento, CA), among others.
CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY
Claire Oliver Gallery is located in Central Harlem, New York, in a four-story brownstone. For nearly twenty-five years, the gallery has presented and championed artistic practices that challenge and expand the traditional art-historical canon, with a particular focus on the work of women and artists of color. Its research-driven exhibition program, supported by an exclusive commitment to the primary market, enables a sustained and in-depth engagement that has nurtured and advanced the careers of the artists it represents.
Many gallery artists have participated in the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial, and the biennials of Sydney, Pittsburgh, and Lyon, and have exhibited in major international museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Works by Claire Oliver Gallery artists are held in the permanent collections of leading museums worldwide, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Britain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The State Hermitage Museum, MoMA, and the Museum of Arts and Design.
Claire Oliver Gallery presented the first American exhibition of the Russian collaborative AES+F, whose work later went on to represent Russia twice at the Venice Biennale. Gallery artists have also received prestigious fellowships and awards, including Fulbright, Guggenheim, USArtist, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Claire Oliver Gallery is located at 2288 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, New York, NY.
Information: www.claireoliver.com. Open Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm.
