“How to Make a Quilt” is an art piece meant to call attention to quiltmaking as a process and artform that facilitates a resistance through radical narration and reimagining of the world.
Through deliberate choice of matching the words of revolutionary thinkers and organizers with the technical methods of quiltmaking, the piece highlights the rich history of quiltmaking, and explores it as a medium for anticolonial work. Throughout our research, we have come across many examples of quiltmaking being used in this way, by women experiencing marginalization at the hands of colonialism and imperialism, as well as their repercussions (e.g., racialized oppression in the U.S.).
Our piece is intended to be a call to action, in a similar manner to the end of Saidya Hartman’s The Plot of Her Undoing. Hartman depicts the “undoing of the plot” (the plot being the complex, nonlinear patterns of oppression that uphold systemic violence, exploitation, and erasure of women of color, including colonialism, imperialism, and racism). She finishes the piece by writing. “The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.” Hartman highlights the collective power of women, who resist oppression and erasure through faith and commitment to a different reality.
Our final piece is intended to honor the way women throughout history have used quiltmaking to undo “the plot” in this way, who have collectively crafted and memorialized their own version of the world; and to inspire viewers to do the same. It argues that anti-racist feminist art need not always include explicit references to specific histories or identities. Here it takes a more stealthy form, a call towards action, towards revolution, under the guise of feminine “craft”.
We thought intentionally about what fabrics to use and what forms for our collective quilt. We discussed the idea of following a more uniform vs. independent structure in terms of color and pattern. In the end, we decided that our final quilt would feel most successful if we used only found fabric scraps and each chose our own colors, allowing our individual efforts to be seen independently in a final collaborative process and practicing “repurposing.” Quilts were often relics of a community’s life, pieced together by discarded textiles and old clothing. We chose to keep this in mind and did not purchase a single new element during our process from start to finish. In the consideration of “quilting as craft,” we chose to create our own form that responded to its historical veracity in a meta and intentionally stripped down way; providing instructions typically associated with teaching a craft but exchanging basic language with quotes of Saidya Hartman’s, as well as some words inspired by The Chilean Arpilleristas and the women of Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective. We also chose this quilting medium to respond to the definition of craft as a job that requires skill and experience, because most of our group had never had exposure to quilting or even sewing before. This moment in time allowed us to work together, teaching each other and experimenting for the first time, to create something that responds to and defies the conformities of craft.
Born out of necessity, the art of sewing and piecing together a quilt has historically been a way for groups of women to find assembly and community, and in making our own quilt, we were able to feel a newfound sense of connection within our group. “How to Make a Quilt,” was deliberately planned to be exhibited in a public, well used space in order to represent the piece as not only accessible, but in direct opposition to the idea of the ‘fine arts’ that one may find in a museum. Instead of confining the piece within an exclusive gallery, the display and creation of the quilt is by the people, and for the people. The theory behind the ‘elevated canon’ of arts directly ties to a few key points, and themes, that the quilt actively undermines. For example; What kind of visual media has Western culture traditionally idolized? Why are some pieces of art considered ‘fine’ whereas others are ‘trades’, or ‘crafts’? What contributes to this visual artistic hierarchy, and is it correlated to deeply rooted systems and tools of oppression?
“How to Make a Quilt,” is a piece that does not attempt to play into these standards of the ‘fine art’ gallery space, or, as Brian O’Doherty once coined in his famous essay from 1976, the ‘white cube’. The white cube is a term that references the practice of removing art from its context entirely and placing it within an exclusive blank display room, such as within a museum, instead of showing the art within an environment more natural and relational to the piece itself, which is linked directly to exploitative colonial practices such as piracy. Instead, sharing the quilt by pinning it up within a more unconventional, well-used, and community oriented space could elevate its meaning radically; this quilt is for all, not just a select few.
From the initial intent and thinking behind “How to Make a Quilt,” down to the communal nature of its execution, and deliberate usage of scrap material, the final piece reflects a radical interruptance to the Western arts’ canon. Sewn by separate hands and joined together in an act of unity, engaging in a re-usage of old clothes, and pieces of fabric left behind from past projects (which are not often considered viable mediums for a ‘formal art project’) the project is a homage to communities and individuals of the past, present, and future, who have used sewing to express their love, joy, dedication, and employed the quilt itself as a radical messenger and agent of change. “How to Make a Quilt” aims to celebrate the legacy of people who have used quilting to challenge oppressive systems and create spaces for resistance and healing. Our quilt is a testament to the enduring power of art as a tool for revolution, inviting viewers to reflect on the ways in which seemingly everyday practices can be transformed into powerful acts of defiance and community building.
To learn more about our inspiration for this work, we encourage continued reading of these resources:
Sohan, V. K. (2015). “But a quilt is more”: Recontextualizing the Discourse(s) of the Gee’s Bend Quilts. College English, 77(4), 294–316. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24240050
