Dia Art Institution

2024

I was accepted to fulfill a project that involved creating a quilt as a way to reproduce an experience, with hopes that the experience can be circulated through the quilt as it changes hands from owner to owner. I am particularly interested in the unique properties quilts have as historical documents and their ability to transmit lore as they are circulated. I’d also like to explore how quilts can embed local ecological and botanical knowledge through the use of natural materials. My interest in quilting arises from influences such as the Gee’s Bend quilts, the underground railroad quilts, and imaginative wedding quilts. To me, these works convey how one’s histories may be deeply intertwined with intuition and myth and that this way of understanding the world can reveal more about our own nature than empirical reasoning can.

For this project, supported by Dia Art Institution, other applicants and I were taken to Walter De Maria's The Lightning Field. There we conducted necessary research in order to fulfill our proposed projects. Upon completion, we presented our projects in a panel to the Dia Community.