Remedio (side 1) 2023, mixed media quilt
Quilts
My work is inspired by Audre Lorde’s ideas about nurturing and interdependency between women as a way to freedom and creativity and my interaction with a quilt created by my now passed grandmother and my own journey through time and space with it. This generative piece, its flexibility allowing for so many shapes and possibilities as it cradled my body from childhood into adulthood, and its qualities that continue to provide nurturance, is the basis for my ideas and transition to textiles. With recent attacks on women’s and trans individuals’ bodily autonomy and blatant displays of abuse in national politics, I examine the relationship between familial relationships and national politics. How do our bodies help us to navigate familial and community relationships and power imbalances? How do the things we create with our hands nurture people we encounter? How do we find agency and healing? How do we nurture ourselves and our communities in order to heal? The complicated history of textiles, rooted in slave trade and oppression and our familiarity with the fabric that touches our skin every day, provides protection, and proves vital for performing identity, makes textiles an ideal medium to explore these questions.
