Collaborations and Commissions

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A Different Future in the Making

Studio Gang and Blue Tin Productions — Chicago, IL

Exhibition consulting, and textile installation. Fabric on fabric, 8 panels, 4 feet by 10 feet each. Illustrations of silhouette on large-scale curtain fabric partitioning the exhibition space.

Igniting a Movement is a quilt celebrating what bottom-up, systemic change can look like in the garment industry—and beyond—through community and care. Using fabrics selected by the Blue Tin sewers, who are refugee women, relevant to their cultural backgrounds, I created a landscape that resembles a fire. Out of the fire rises sparks transformed into silhouettes of people spread across the panels. The silhouettes are from the architectural model Studio Gang made for the 63rd House, a multifunctional community space and manufacturing studio in Chicago Lawn, representing a diverse group of people unlike typical models. The modular curtains are planned to be used as definers of space in the 63rd House instead of walls to foster transparency, community, and creativity.

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What can bottom-up, systemic change look like in the garment industry—and beyond—when exploitation and violence are replaced by community and care? And what role might architecture and design play in this transformation?

This inaugural exhibition in Studio Gang’s new Gallery shows how these questions are being explored by Chicago’s Blue Tin Production, the first apparel manufacturing worker cooperative in America run by immigrant, refugee, and working-class women of color.

I worked as a consulting artist on components of the exhibition that would then be used at the Blue Tin’s new cultural center space. The above are original tapestries that I created using fabric that was picked by the garment workers of Blue Tin Productions based on their cultures. I designed the layout and sewed the appliqued fabrics on the curtains. The top segment is cut-out silhouettes of diverse people, based on the designs that the architects created for the model.