New Flags for Old Institutions is a textile-based series where I challenge the rigidity of traditional democratic structures through its unconventional materials. Using everyday materials, this series is both a critique of the nation's failings and a hopeful gesture towards a future where no one is left behind. Amidst renewed political hostilities, it stands as a tender but urgent call to protect and uplift those most under attack. Let us evoke Kathy Acker's embrace of disorder as a form of resistance. In a time when the Trump administration perpetuates exclusion and harm, we demand a democracy that defies oppressive norms and centers the voices of those systematically marginalized.

We Hold Us Gently
Video, 06:59
Dimensions variable
2024

We Hold Us Gently
This work unfolds in three parts, each reflecting a phase in my pursuit of community and interconnection, grounded in an exploration of the inner self. For years, my art has been fueled by a combustible, unrelenting anger toward the patriarchy and the harm it perpetuates, but this method of working and processing has left me fragmented and isolated. In the impending consequences of the recent U.S. election, I find myself questioning whether this approach can continue. It no longer feels sustainable—nor does it feel like enough.

In the first phase of the work, my hands rest on a table, reaching outward. They meet another set of hands—my own, doubled within the frame. They reach for each other. As they touch and overlap, their form softens, their colors deepen. I ask to be held. I need reassurance to believe I am not alone. At first, I can only trust myself. Then, more hands appear, joining mine. “We are right here.”

My hands again rest on a surface to meet others as they stack stones and shells on my nails. The act of performing femininity, once isolating, becomes a shared ritual. In gathering—whether as groups, circles, or covens—even under the guise of patriarchal expectation, we subvert it. The plans fail. “We are holding you.”

My fingers comb my mother’s hair. My mother combs my hair with her fingers. In this gentle, intimate exchange, I am held, and I hold her in return. Together, in these moments of care, I find the foundation for something new. This is where I choose to root myself: in gentleness and connection, in the domestic and the shared. In this act, I honor the feminine and queer wisdom of the body and the lived experiences of mothers and elders, whose knowledge passes from hand to hand. In these small, profound gestures, we become, as Janine Antoni describes, “vehicles of interconnection to ourselves, to others, and to the world.”