Rachel Wallis
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Stitch x Stitch: Conversation on Quilts, 'Healing,' and Abolition

​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.  
For more information see the conference website. 
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Reweaving the Tear 2019

Reweaving the Tear  was a collaboration with Tanuja Jagernauth for the exhibition Everything Has Changed at Agitator Gallery, exploring our relationship as acupuncture patient and practitioner after a life-altering bike crash. 
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 Craft/Work Collective

Craft/Work is an interactive, community-based, multi-platform project exploring and transgressing the boundaries between “Art” and “Craft”. Founded in 2013 by artists and crafters Nora Renick-Rinehart and Rachel Wallis, Craft/Work creates public access to art theory and history, encourages people of all backgrounds to make, and gives them the tools and materials with which to do so. Through gallery exhibits, academic articles, artist talks, and an online publication, Craft/Work aims to draw people into a broader conversation about the relationship between what they make and “Art” with a capital A.

Untitled (Homicide Quilt) 2014

Created in collaboration with El Stitch y Bitch, Untitled (Homicide Quilt) documents the uneven impact of violence on the neighborhood of Chicago. Designed and embroidered over the thirteen members of the Stitch y Bitch collective, the quilt showcases the names of the 415 individuals murdered in Chicago in 2013 embroidered on the neighborhoods where they died.

Read More:
Homicide Quilt - Surface Design Journal
Quilt on display with names of Chicago's homicide victims, 'You can see the hurt'
- Chicago Tribune

Crafters Speak on Homicide Quilt - Chicago Tribune
Murder Quilt a Stark Reminder of 2013 Victims: 'It's So Easy to Ignore'
- DNAinfo Chicago


Quilted Souls 2012

Created in collaboration with El Stitch y Bitch for HANAL PIXÁN Food for the Souls at the National Museum of Mexican Art.
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