Quilting Patterns of Identity
2019-2022
Quilting Patterns of Identity (installation video)
Laser-cut paper, inks, gold leaf, 28’ x 16’ x 2’
Katara Cultural Village, Doha, Qatar
Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Oklahoma City
Gilcrease Museum
Tulsa, OK
Quilting Patterns fuses floral and geometric patterns taken from quilt designs from Pakistan and the Gilcrease Museum’s collection in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hanging like banners, they offer tribute to women craft artists across the globe whose identities and memories are preserved in the quilts they create, and by the families who are kept warm by them. Their porousness—the way they change and play with the light—recalls sacred principles recognizing the spiritual within the material.
The title foregrounds multi-layered identities that immigrant women assume within and between cultures. As an immigrant, for me, community and belonging are not static, but a process of continually engaging. In visualizing this process, the patterns I use from human and natural creation expose cosmic interconnectedness between and across cultures. By blending the geometric patterns in the quilt designs, the work creates a symbolic dialogue between women from different cultures and time periods, showing human connections through shared art forms and expressions.
10 laser-cut paper panels, ink, gold leaf, monofilament nylon thread, each 42 in. across. Dimensions: Overall, as shown 192 x 336 x 24 in. Each panel, 42 in. across; length varies from 66 to 236 in.
To design this installation, I researched historical quilt patterns from the Gilcrease collection and combined the geometric patterns from these with floral and geometric quilt patterns from Pakistan and South Asia. By blending the patterns in the quilt designs, the work creates a symbolic dialogue between women from different cultures and time periods, showing human connections through shared art forms and expressions.
This work is a tribute to the women quilt-makers in many regions whose identities and memories are preserved for posterity in the quilts they create. This project is also about the multi-layered identities that immigrant women assume within and between cultures. Each immigrant mixes parts of her native culture with parts of the new one into a unique hybrid self. As in quilts, some elements of women’s personal identity lie in shadows, hidden from themselves and others, while other layers find expression at the surface.
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