23 Extinct Redwork Quilt Project: Repairing Relationships with Our More-Than-Human Kin, Stitch by Stich

Authors

Heather Kerley, Independent ArtistFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Alternate paper title: “Mourning Our Kin (23 Extinct)” Redwork Quilt

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed 23 species for delisting from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. I would like to present my redwork quilt, Mourning Lost Kin (23 Extinct), which honors each of these species. I plan to share my process from researching and sketching each species to the embroidering of each block and the over-all construction of the quilt. But most importantly, I would love to share the stories of these species, the layers of meaning in this quilt, and the many questions it raised for me over the course of two years.

In the current era, in which we face the possible extinction of upwards of one million species, it falls to artists to respond to the question of how we are to live with such loss. If you listen to the final recording of a bird called the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, which is the last of its species, you will hear an unanswered question outlining the shape of nonexistence. I chose redwork embroidery for this project because the linework gives form to absence, while the red color suggests the violence involved in species demise.

Each quilt block is a meditation on the voids left by vanished beings and is emblematic of a larger story of change and loss. As we see biodiversity disappearing from every corner of the planet, these species challenge us to reconsider our relationship with our more-than-human kin, and to confront our grief over living in a wounded world.