We Are Never Never Other, 2018, PVC Coated Vinyl, 137 1/3 × 264 inches (348.7 × 670.6 cm)
Installed in the summer of 2018 on the façade of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis.
Protest Banner Lending Library, 2016 – present.
Protest Banner Lending Library is a socially engaged art project where I create functional lending libraries of protest banners and facilitate free public workshops teaching people how to make their own protest banners. So far, there are Protest Banner Lending Libraries in Chicago, Toronto, St. Louis, Boston, Ithaca, Normal, Cleveland, Rotterdam, and Los Angeles. Installation: Chicago Cultural Center. Photo: eedahahm.
Banners from the Protest Banner Lending Library at the Home is Here! March to Defend DACA AND TPS, October–November 2019 in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Organized by a coalition of immigrant rights organizations including HANA Center. Banners are constantly being checked out, used, and returned to the Protest Banner Lending Library.
Photo: OffThaRecord x Steer.
Messages to Our Neighbors, 2021.
Throughout the summer of 2021, I worked with high school youth in the Mural Arts Education program on Messages to Our Neighbors, a project exploring the intersection of citizenship, immigration, and belonging. We created banners that turned into a 28-billboard series that is currently up all over the city of Philadelphia. Each banner consists of short phrases and slogans that highlight young people’s experiences of immigration and their aspirations for the world.
Photo: Steve Weinik
U.S. Citizenship Test Samplers (Made by non-citizens who live and work in the U.S.)
Photo: Jessica Bingham
Cotton thread, sequins, beads, photo transfers, patches, felt, and yarn on linen. 8.5 x 11 inches each. Installation view at University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal, 2019.
Currently there are over 120 samplers each made by a non-citizen. Each of these are on sale for the cost of applying for citizenship - $725. If sold, the full amount goes to the maker of the sampler.
U.S. Citizenship Test Sampler, #53 by Karina, 2014,
Many of these are made in workshops at non-profit organizations, community centers, and schools all over the U.S. where communities of non-citizen immigrants come together to learn the citizenship test material through the act of sewing. The sampler workshops organically become grassroots round table discussions addressing immigrant rights, labor politics, and everyday concerns of intergenerational and multiethnic people.
Photo: Jayson Cheung
Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can’t, 2016, 2020, and 2022. This voting station was created by Brandon Bullard at the Heidelberg Project, Detroit.
For the OUVS 2016 and 2020, I worked with over 50 collaborators to create more than 70 reimagined voting stations open to all, and particularly for the disenfranchised during election seasons.
Photo: Brandon Bullard.
Ni Una Mas, Ni Una Menos for the Protest Garment Lab featuring Miranda Betancourt, 2020. This is a video documentation of Miranda wearing and activating her protest garment. For Protest Garment Lab I am collaborating with other artists, fashion designers and makers to create garments that have hidden appendages and pockets that open up into protest banners. This was made to protect the wearer of the garment, highlight a moment of transformation, and to embolden the wearer.
Video documentation by Milo Mendoza.