About

Stitch x Stitch is a convening situated within a long historical conversation between quilting and social justice. Textile artists have long engaged with quilting and community crafting practices to advocate for the abolition of criminalization and incarceration. Abolitionist quilters have used imagery and embroidered text, as a means of swaying public opinion and troubling state level policies that promote notions of “order and justice” through criminalization. Through politically charged work, artists have long highlighted the intersection of racial capitalism and trauma and the disproportionate impact of police violence, criminalization and incarceration on communities of color. We seek to explore how quilting can serve as an embodied, liberatory practice and the role it plays in facilitating new forms of liberation. We also wish to interrogate definitions of "healing," both productive and problematic, and its intersections with quilting and work of the hand.