Earlier this year, I was faced with a question on an open call application that once had been easy to answer. What country do you represent?

In recent years, my sense of attachment to my birth country has been tested. At times, I am downright embarrassed to say I am from the US, which is not something I would have thought I would say before the 2016 election. I do not agree with the current administration, and I am frustrated with all sides of my government. I have voted. I have shared my thoughts and made appeals to my representatives. I have argued with family and friends, confused by their support for people or programs which ultimately hurt other people and the very country they claim to be so loyal to. I have come to realise that for many, the party they vote for is very much a part of what defines them and how they define others.

When I first registered to vote, I had no idea what party represented what lines of thought or what any of that meant beyond whatever facts were taught at school. There was a little quiz you could take which listed the current political issues of the time. The answers would reveal which party you should choose when you registered. My chosen ethics and values aligned mostly with the Democrats, and so that is how I registered to vote, much to the chagrin of my family. Fun fact- I didn’t know the majority of my family was registered as Republicans. I found out when they asked me how I registered and then proceeded to be very upset by my choice. Even then, I never thought about what ” being raised in a republican household” was supposed to mean for my identity.

When I started my home artist residency for the deconstruction of self and my identity, politics were not part of the plan. Politics involved actions like voting and contacting your representatives. Interest in politics often meant being categorized as a political person. I did not make the connections between identity and action because I did not consider myself to be a political person. I think in part that is because, even though I was a voter, I still somehow felt disconnected from the political system. I categorized myself by my degree field( environmental science and biology), by my role as wife and mother. I categorized myself by my hobbies and interests. As a society, we want to categorize things neatly, but the truth is, everything is interwoven. We tend to forget that. In labeling and putting into categories, we lose aspects of ourselves and the connections we have to the world around us. (This is, in itself, a whole other topic to conquer in another post someday.)

Living abroad has meant I can not easily attend events like a No Kings protest. I have been frustrated with my attempts at writing my representatives. I don’t feel they hear me, especially when all I get in response is to be added to an email list selling hats or soliciting donations. I know from talking to other people that I am not the only one feeling this way. People were sad, angry, tired, and losing hope. Some artists I have spoken with wondered why we should continue creating art when the world was in so much turmoil. I needed a project to help me feel hopeful, to share my own voice, and to help others do the same. I came across a project called Democracy in Stitches. I decided I wanted to work on the project in a community space while also incorporating it into my own study of identity.

This Spring, I co-facilitated a Democracy in Stitches coworking session through the Surface Design Association. We plan to keep it going throughout the current administration. It has proved to be healing. We meet online once a month and work on our projects side by side. We share project updates and talk about how we are feeling. It’s a space designed for us to detox a bit, feel the support of community, and feel the hope that brings. I don’t know how the art will be documented in the future. I don’t think the documenting of it is the important part. I think the action of the project is what matters (how the project makes us feel both individually and as a community). It is a small form of protest. A little action that makes things feel less bleak. A reminder that community matters. It is also a project that anyone can join. You can participate as an individual, or you can form a co-working group near you or online. You don’t have to be from the United States to participate. It is a project that can be done anywhere in the world.

I strongly believe that the world is not ending. I know it seems astronomically bleak when we are faced with political turmoil and climate change. We are coming to the end of what we know, and many of us are grieving this chapter of human history. I don’t know what comes next. I do know that the art and the things we create are a big part of the picture. Creativity will be our oxygen masks and the tools we need to connect, heal and build something new. The things we make will help influence how the next chapter will be written and how we remind ourselves of what was before.

Please feel free to use the resources I have shared below as a catalyst for your own project.

Resources about the importance of creating art in times of political upheaval

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” — Toni Morrison, The Nation, 23.3.2015

Tania Bruguera on Why Today’s Art Must Be Political- Hyperallergic https://hyperallergic.com/tania-bruguera-on-why-todays-art-must-be-political/

About Tania: https://taniabruguera.com/

Trusting the Process: Creativity During Difficult Times https://beandbelongcounseling.com/blog/trusting-the-process

Creating Art During Global Crises: Why Your Work Still Matters https://reddotblog.com/creating-art-during-global-crises-why-your-work-still-matters/

Projects to Join

For Submission to Democracy In Stitches

The current theme for Democracy in Stitches is Standup, and you can visit the project and find submission information here: https://www.yarndancevt.com/stand-up

Use examples from the resources below to inspire new ideas.

Previous projects include ideas in the Resistance Gallery https://www.yarndancevt.com/cloths-of-resistance

Examples:

Stitch the phrase ” this is not normal” repetitively or choose your own word or phrase
Make a calendar and stitch a daily headline as a form of witnessing

Knit Democracy Together

a project by Eve Jacobs-Carnahan

https://knitdemocracy.org/

Inspiration/Exhibitions

Soul Stories:

A collection of quilts and textile art used as a vehicle for personal expression, social reflection, and collective healing.

https://www.soulstoriesart.com/

Inspiration from Craftivism

Students ditch doomscrolling for hand-stitched expression

https://www.rit.edu/news/students-ditch-doomscrolling-hand-stitched-expression?utm_campaign=mc-nedaily&utm_source=ritmail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=additional-story

Spinning Bees as Early Protest: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/spinning-american-independence

Artist Study: Stacey Rozen

She is a craftivist and yarn graffiti artist. She collaborates with communities for projects that can help heal.

https://curioussleuth.com/stacey-rozen/

Prompt List

It isn’t always easy to know where to start. I have compiled resources with themes, art to study, and questions to ask. These are the start of my own studies and represent a very small amount of the resources and inspiration available. Use these as a beginning for your own creative study. Or choose to create something that helps with your own healing. It would be nice if you do want to share your project. However, it’s also ok if you prefer to keep it to yourself. These resources can also be used by educators in unit studies for the classroom or for homeschool.

I consider this page to be a living document, meaning that I may add to it from time to time as I find new resources or inspiration. This list of resources and questions is by no means comprehensive. If you are an artist who would like to be included in this list of resources, please send me a message via the contact page and let me know which section fits your work.

A Place to Start

Not sure what to work on? Use these prompts to get you started:

Stitch a word or phrase that feels important to you right now.
Choose a color that represents how you feel about the world at this moment and let it guide the materials you choose for your project.
Work with what you already have. Use leftover yarn, scrap fabric, or found textiles and see what emerges.
Make something small. A square, strip, patch, or fragment is enough.
Repeat one simple action (one stitch, one knot, one loop, or one mark) for the entire session. Or use the same color for the entire session.
Choose a shape(a circle, a strip, or a band) and work inside it for the entire session
Ask to see another person’s work. Respond to it by creating an echo of their work (The same stitch, the same color, the same texture)
Think about listening, holding, or containing, instead of showing.
How might a voice show up as texture, tension, or rhythm rather than words?
Participation: What does joining, contributing, or opting out look like in your process?
Where can you create space ( gaps, pauses, or softness) in your work?
How can you rework or reinterpret a traditional motif in a contemporary context?
Add one bright or stubborn color to a muted base. Let it interrupt the quiet.
What does healing look like in textile language? softness, strength, repetition, lightness?
Document the mood of the day with a color, shape, or symbol. You can stitch, crochet, knit, weave, etc.

Slowing Down as a Form of Resistance

We live in a world that encourages us to produce, monetize, and meet deadlines. Working slowly and with intention allows us to quietly resist the idea that our worth is tied to the output. We can reclaim the creative work as a meditation, allowing us to be more present within ourselves and the moment.

How does slowness act as resistance in a fast-information culture?

How does physical, tactile work change how we process complex global events compared to scrolling through them?

What does this look like in our textile work?

The work can remain unfinished. Start a piece today during the session. Allow the session to be your timer. Whatever is completed today will be all the work the piece requires.
Let your body set the pace. Allow your hands to find their own rhythm.
Notice where you want to rush and ask yourself what happens if you don’t.

Material Translations

Discussion:

How can you use materials or techniques to translate concepts or ideas?

What is the relationship between softness and protest?

The physical materials we use have their own histories (where a fabric was milled, how paper was produced, the origins of a pigment). How do the histories of our studio materials carry their own political or geographical narratives, even before we start making?

Try some of these ideas in your work:

Translate agreement and disagreement through contrast: tight/loose, dense/open, smooth/rough.
Work with layers to suggest many voices existing at once. Or to suggest something being covered up.
Allow irregularity or interruption to remain visible.
Use repetition to reflect collective action or shared effort.
Explore the use of different weights of materials, for example: magazines blended with fabrics
Explore the idea of unraveling or taking apart within your work or a material. Deconstruct a set of items( place bags, packaging, fabric, a magazine)
Explore the idea of repurposing a garment or other item
What materials have symbolic meaning to you and how can you use them in your own art practice?

Artist Study: Alice Eugenia Ligon

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/embroidered-garment-31975

Artist Study: Niraja Lorenz

Green Catastrophe

https://art.kunstmatrix.com/en/artwork/1492652/niraja-lorenz/green-catastrophe

Artist Study: Nicholas Hlobo

Hlobo uses inner tubes and ribbon to stitch together materials that represent South Africa’s industrial and cultural history.

https://www.biennial.com/artists/nicholas-hlobo-2/

How can you reimagine or reclaim a material?

Text-Based Prompts

Discussion:

What is the difference between a slogan and stitch?

Does fiber allow difficult conversations to enter through a different door?

Prompts to try:

Stitch or imply a single word that feels important right now.
Work with partial text ( fragments, cut-off words, or hidden letters). Print them out on paper or clip newspapers and magazines.
Translate a word into a pattern or rhythm instead of letters.
Tear news articles into small pieces and reconfigure them on your surface.Let the fragments interact in unexpected ways, creating new “conversations” between stories. Use thread to connect fragments, suggesting relationships, tension, or networks.
Create a sampler of current events example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVIQZg_khwH/?img_index=1
Choose a word to represent the day: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWi1nPgDlrG/?img_index=1

Artist Study:Diana Weymer

Tiny Pricks Project https://www.tinypricksproject.com/participate/

Artist Study:Sarah Ann Smith

Words –> Power –> Action

https://art.kunstmatrix.com/en/artwork/1492645/sarah-ann-smith/words-power-action

Artist Study: The Profanity Embroidery group

Uses profanity and humor to get their point across

Warning: content includes profanity and NSFW content

https://www.facebook.com/profanityembroiderygroup/posts/pfbid02i1gboEXAnzK5ocz87dhHv8AcR12T7oG54ESSQTybaFuhpn7Mu1UKj5ptF79zwoEVl

https://pegwhitstable.co.uk/

Civic & Political Context Prompts

These prompts invite reflection on contemporary political life without requiring slogans, endorsements, or explicit messaging. You can interpret the prompts personally, symbolically, or abstractly.

Voting & Participation

What does participation feel like in your body? steady, anxious, hopeful, fragmented? How can you show this in your work?
Translate the act of voting into material form: a mark, a fold, a stitch repeated.
Create a piece that reflects showing up, even when it feels small.
Use grids, boxes, or divisions to reflect ballots, districts, or systems.
Consider using maps or voter information fact sheets directly in your work

The Suffragette Movement

Textiles, the Power of Resistance, and Winning the Vote

https://schachtspindle.com/blogs/news/textiles-the-power-of-resistance-and-winning-the-vote?srsltid=AfmBOoosqFoFjHk1InY7zOfE3PiryS_bcdNXDH72DfFbkCZ5o2RAkFAF

Make A Way: Four artists respond to the voting rights crisis

https://galleryrouteone.org/2024/10/make-a-way-four-artists-respond-to-the-voting-rights-crisis/

Division & Polarization

Work with contrast: two materials that resist each other. Or two techniques that resist one another.
Create tension through tight and loose areas in the same piece.
Let colors clash or attempt to blend.
Explore what happens where two edges meet.

Artist Study: Melisse Laing

Racial Tensions

https://www.saqa.com/art/browse-collection/racial-tensions

Artistic representations of data can help bridge the US political divide over climate change

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00856-9#:~:text=When%20used%20to%20prompt%20individual,by%20exposure%20to%20data%20graphs.

Protest & Public Voice

Use bold repetition to reflect chant, rhythm, or gathering.
Stitch over something to conceal, cross out, or reinforce it.
Incorporate interruption: a sudden shift in pattern or direction.
Work large gestures in small scale.

Art to study:

The revolutionary knitting circle

https://medium.com/@grantneufeld/the-revolutionary-knitting-circle-proclamation-of-constructive-revolution-67efc906bf9d

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Knitting_Circle

Make Art Not War: 8 Anti-War Artworks that Show How Protest Art Can Reclaim Power in a World at War

https://maddoxgallery.com/news/447-make-art-not-war-8-anti-war-artworks/

Rights & Structures

Explore structure: grids, frameworks, foundations.
Remove part of the structure, and ask what happens?
Reinforce one area and weaken another.
Layer materials to suggest complexity in systems.

Media & Information

Repeat a motif until it becomes noise.
Distort pattern intentionally.
Overlay conflicting patterns.
Fragment and reassemble.

Artist Study: Barbara Kruger

https://www.thebroad.org/art/barbara-kruger

Known for pasting over mass media images

Care as Political Action

In a world that values productivity, caring for others can be a radical act. The act of care is not considered valuable because it is difficult to put a price on caring. It is often a silent act. How do we demonstrate acts of caring and call attention to it? How can this show up in our creative work? The cost of caring is also silent. How do we draw attention to something that does not have a monetary value? How do we make our own fatigue visible? How do we demonstrate that caring for ourselves and others is important?

Discussion Questions and prompts:

If destruction is loud and fast, care is slow and deliberate. How can you use your physical materials to contrast these ideas? Consider acts of binding, piecing together, or stitching surfaces back together as the primary expression of the piece.
Mend something visibly.
Repair with contrast rather than camouflage.
Build something soft that holds something fragile. We often associate resistance with hard, unyielding materials. What happens if you portray protection or resistance through softness, warmth, or vulnerability?
Build a modular unit or set of items and connect them to represent community- none of us survive alone. How can you visually map the invisible threads, networks, or ecosystems that sustain you or your community?

Silence, Fatigue & Overwhelm

If your current piece were a physical space of refuge from a hyper-productive world, what colors, textures, and boundaries would it need to feel safe and entirely unproductive?
Leave sections unfinished to demonstrate fatigue.
Allow threads to trail or remain unresolved to demonstrate overwhelm
Work with fading color or thinning material as a visual documentation of fatigue
Make a piece that holds quiet rather than a declaration

Gender & Political Context Prompts

These prompts invite reflection on how gender intersects with civic life, rights, labor, visibility, and power. I invite you to approach these directly, symbolically, abstractly, or through material exploration. Where can gender show up in your materials and techniques?

Discussion Questions:

Does craft have more political power when it is gendered, domestic, or community-centric?

Does embroidery domesticate political language or sharpen it?

Can intimacy be radical?

Why are traditional domestic crafts like stitching, embroidery, and fiber art historically separated from “fine art” in galleries? How does reclaiming these slow, tactile mediums in a contemporary studio serve as a political statement about gender, class, and value?

Visibility and Invisibility

What does it mean to be seen or unseen in public life? Translate visibility into texture, color, or scale.
Use transparency, thin materials, or negative space to explore presence and absence.

Labor and Value

What does it mean to document time through labor?

Highlight repetitive, domestic, or care-based stitches as central rather than secondary.
Make the labor visible. Emphasize knots, seams, joins, and handwork.

Rights and the Body

Consider the body as a structure. How might tension, stretch, or containment appear in your work?
Use tight and loose areas to suggest restriction and release.
Create a boundary, then soften or disrupt it.

Inspiration Project:

Artist, Alexandria Masse is crocheting her birth control information sheet: https://youtu.be/Po7qrO_Soz8?si=dPVp90qqowk92k-1

It is done as an act of performance art, documented by her YouTube videos

How green became the color of the abortion rights movement https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1107717283/abortion-rights-green-symbol

Voice and Agency

Stitch a mark that repeats as an assertion of presence.
Use bold contrast or scale shifts to explore amplification or silencing.

Immigration and Political Context Prompts

These prompts invite reflection on politics centered around immigration. Whether migration is a result of climate change or the current state of geopolitics, there are many people contemplating forced relocation or loss of status. Even people living in their country of birth are feeling alienated or in physical danger.

Consider and reflect on what it might look like to have to leave your home. How can that reflection show up in your work? Do you want it to be directly symbolic or more abstract?

What does instability look like in textile form?

Borders

Use a line as a symbol. Is it a border, a horizon, a seam, a scar?What happens if you cross it, blur it, unravel it, or mend it?
Visible / Invisible Borders. Create two areas divided by something subtle. For example: sheer fabric, faint stitching, negative space. What borders exist that cannot be seen but are deeply felt?
Open Door / Closed Door. Create a textile with an opening such as a flap, slit, or pocket. Is it accessible? Guarded? Hidden?
Reimagine the idea of a welcome mat. Who is it welcoming? Who is it excluding?
Paperwork:What does bureaucracy look like in thread or textile form? Incorporate stitched lines resembling forms, grids, ID cards, or documents.

Portable Home

SAQA Forced to Flee Exhibition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvseKKdKDQ&list=PLXsBpWjk3xVA0z4YY-FX30bAlqOwFSMlC

What object would you carry if you had to leave? How can you incorporate this object into your work as a pattern or a material
Incorporate a motif that represents “home”. Is the motif architectural, botanical, linguistic, or symbolic?
What can you fit into a suitcase? Imagine the weight of the Suitcase. Attach small weighted elements or dense stitching in one area. How does weight shift across the piece?
Embroider a map (literal or abstract ) of movement: cities lived in, ancestral routes, imagined journeys.
Create a house form that is fragmented, stitched together, or floating. What does home look like when it is no longer fixed in place?

Artist Study: Ai Weiwei

While known for many mediums, his work “Law of the Journey” (a massive rubber life raft with faceless figures) deals directly with the global refugee crisis and the failures of democratic systems to protect human rights.

https://artpil.com/news/law-of-the-journey-ai-weiwei/

https://nanovic.nd.edu/features/law-of-the-journey-and-europes-forgotten-graveyard/

Artist Study:Melisse Laing

26 Hours 6 Minutes

This piece is about her distance from a friend. I thought it could be relevant because it is an abstract expression of a map, using scraps of fabrics that she got from her friend.

https://melisselaing.com/2023/03/13/sold-26-hours-6-minutes/

How might you create a similar project to reflect on the distance you are from a friend, family member or your place of birth?

Additional Resources:

Entangled Histories of Art and Migration-Theories, Sites and Research Methods

By Cathrine Bublatzky (Edited by) Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther, et al.

Reshaping History and Perception

Is a mended garment a historical record?

Artist Study: Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

https://www.instagram.com/gosiamirga/?hl=en

https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/58-magorzata-mirga-tas/

https://www.artandhistory.museum/en/malgorzata-mirga-tas

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/sep/21/malgorzata-mirga-tas-roma-polish-art-artist

She creates monumental textile collages from found fabrics to represent the Roma identity and history. Her work addresses stereotypes while also engaging with positive imagery of the Roma Community. The art portrays scenes of everyday life from a feminist perspective. Her viewpoint captures modern life while acknowledging her heritage.

If you are part of a marginalized community, how can you reclaim the narrative through your work?
What stereotypes can you acknowledge and then counter within your own art?
Are there aspects of US history documented in art or photographs that you can reinterpret in your work, showing an alternate perspective?

Artist Study:Katherine Westphal

Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/unveiling-statue-liberty-21317

Palestinian Tatreez

In memory there is defiance’: inside the V&A exhibition exploring Palestinian textile and embroidery as an act of resistance

https://www.sofst.org/8-textile-artists-inspired-by-activism/

Racism and Political Context Prompts

Prompts on Systemic and Structural Racism

Use a technical or architectural stitch (like a grid or brick stitch) to represent a systemic barrier such as redlining, unequal school funding, or hiring biases. How do you “disrupt” this rigid pattern with your thread?
Represent the “weathering” effect of systemic racism on the body and mind. Use techniques like distressing, burning, or fraying the edges of a high-quality fabric to show how external systems wear down internal resilience.

Prompts on Identity and Visibility

Take a piece of fabric with a pre-existing pattern (like a floral print) and erase parts of it by stitching over them in a solid, heavy color. Reflect on whose histories have been stitched over or silenced in the narrative of your country.
Explore privilege through sheer fabrics like organza or tulle layered over opaque ones. Use the transparency to show what is visible to some but hidden to others. How does your view change depending on which layer of fabric you are looking through?
We often label people based on race. Create a series of small textile tags or labels that subvert the stereotypes often placed on your community or others. What does it mean to “rip the label out”?

Prompts on Allyship and Accountability

Deeply ingrained racism isn’t just covered up; it must be removed. Spend a session unpicking a previously stitched piece of work. Document the physical effort, the mess of leftover threads, and the holes left behind. This represents the labor of deconstructing one’s own biases.
In embroidery, if the tension is too tight, the fabric puckers; if it’s too loose, the design falls apart. Map a difficult conversation you’ve had about race. Where was the tension? Where did you let go? Use varying thread tensions to visualize that dialogue.
Use visible mending as a metaphor. Traditional mending often tries to hide the hole. Visible mending (like Sashiko or darning) celebrates the repair, making the scar beautiful and stronger than the original fabric. Identify a specific wound caused by racism in your local community. Instead of trying to hide it, use bold, contrasting thread to mend a tear in your fabric, acknowledging that the damage happened but that the repair is a deliberate, conscious act.

Resource:

Quilt of Souls:A Memoir By Phyllis Biffle Elmore

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/713028/quilt-of-souls-by-phyllis-biffle-elmore-author/

Document Community and Hope

Documenting what we have can help remind us of the good things life has to offer. Finding Hope helps us keep pushing onward.

Inspiration Piece: True Haven by Lena Meszaros

https://art.kunstmatrix.com/en/artwork/1492624/lena-meszaros/true-haven

Resistance Documented

Artist Study:Rufina Bazlova

https://www.vyzyvanka.com/

Bazlova uses traditional Belarusian red-and-white embroidery to document the 2020 pro-democracy protests.She uses cross Stitch as a Pixel representative of digital age activism. The folk patterns are “ safe” or gentle ways to depict the imagery. The imagery is often of brutal events within the history of her country.

How can you similarly document political protests and events?
What colors or symbols would you use as motifs? Look to news media or political cartoons for inspiration.

Artist Study: Arpilleristas (Chile)

https://molaa.org/arpilleras-online

https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/ecritures-de-la-subversion-les-arpilleristas-chiliennes/

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/newspaper-fabric-scraps-story-arpilleristas-chile

Las Arpilleristas were An anonymous collective of women during the Pinochet dictatorship. They used scraps of cloth to sew Arpilleras,brightly colored appliqués that secretly documented human rights abuses and the “disappearance” of their loved ones.

Artist Study:Wen Redmond

What If

https://art.kunstmatrix.com/en/artwork/1492638/wen-redmond/what-if

Artist Study: Paul Nash

During the world war, Nash and other artsits documented what they saw. Nash beloved an artist could act as a messenger.

‘I am no longer an artist, I am a messenger to those who want the war to go on for ever… and may it burn their lousy souls’- Paul Nash

The war art of Paul Nash https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-war-art-of-paul-nash-1917-1944/

Reflection

Ask yourself these questions during your creative work and as you finish each piece.

What drew you to this project today?
Where did you feel ease? Where did you feel resistance?
Did your hands know something before your words did?
What would you like this piece to hold?
What does it feel like to make without explaining?
Where does your attention go when you repeat the same action?
What does this piece need in order to continue or to stop?
What expectations are you reinforcing, challenging, or revising through your work?
How does your piece hold strength, vulnerability, or complexity at the same time?
When does making feel safest for you?
What conditions silence your creativity?
What is one small creative act you can commit to daily?

Additional Artist Studies

Alighiero e Boetti

Boetti’s famous “Mappa” series consists of world maps embroidered by female artisans in Afghanistan. Because these maps were made over decades, they capture the shifting geopolitical borders, the fall of the USSR, and changing national flags.

https://gladstonegallery.com/exhibit/mappa/

How can you document the changing geopolitical concepts of today using maps? Consider documenting the trade and tariffs. Or, document the changes to voting districts using maps.

Adrienne Sloane

https://adriennesloane.com/

Sloane uses mediums of comfort and bonding to investigate American fissures

https://adriennesloane.com/selected-other-work

creates quilts, flags, portraits of famous American folk heroes, and Americana sculptural objects by stitching together scavenged materials such as aluminum cans, found metal, as well as found objects, wood, and fabric.

Ross Palmer Breecher https://artisttrust.org/artists/ross-palmer-beecher-2/

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler’s practice focuses on issues of the public sphere, addressing cultural and political concerns both domestic and foreign, often through the feminist lens of their impact on the lives of women.

Her collage and photomontages juxtapose scenes of American life with sociopolitical issues

https://www.martharosler.net/about-the-artist

https://galerielelong.com/artists/55-martha-rosler/

https://www.moma.org/artists/6832-martha-rosler

Inspired by Martha Rosler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-tVdsRPAns

Josh Kline

https://www.instagram.com/joshklinejoshkline/?hl=en

His work is a commentary on capitalism, cultural norms in relation to social class, and identity.

Josh Kline in “Human Nature” – Season 12 | Art21

https://youtu.be/8JY7-bSXnOo?si=B4mwyrdgzUxHLGGE

Resources:

Textile Expressionsim Virtual Exhibition: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/10399250/catalog

8 Textile Artists Inspired by Activism