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New Demands? Cloth banner
New Demands? Cloth banner
2015

New Demands? We Mourn Our Losses
Textile banner, hand and machine sewn cotton and silk with trims, 44 x 58 inches, 2015

Inspired by textile banners carried in a 1911 public funeral march and protest following the Triangle Factory Fire that killed 146 young, mostly Jewish and immigrant women garment workers. The original banners, captured in a handful of archival photographs, read "Workers Mourn Our Loss" (singular). New Demands? We Mourn Our Losses was adapted to the plural, "We Mourn Our Losses" to acknowledge a trajectory of historical and present-day losses for workers. This work also reflects on losses caused by structural white supremacy (like the 2013 closure of dozens of Chicago public schools in primarily Black and Latinx neighborhoods), racialized police violence, and assaults on reproductive freedoms and transgender peoples.

Also exhibited as part of I Can't Breathe at ARC Gallery, Chicago, juried by Mary Patten and Romi Crawford, PhD.

Photo: Robert Chase Heisman
Studio assistance: Christie Carlson