"Art can impact the social context of family dislocations and can serve as a powerful tool in encouraging an open national dialogue about Zero Tolerance in our country"
So (sew) America Cares is a participatory social art project with a commitment to raise awareness about the lives of the children separated from their parents at the border. All the faces stitched together strengthen the very fabric of our own society.
In 2018 a Zero Tolerance immigration policy was announced, requiring that all families who cross the border shall not only be separated but also charged in federal court with the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry.
This Project’s mission is to advocate for these children and to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to participate. Thread by thread, fiber by fiber, a participating community will increase its understanding of the circumstances of these children who never asked to be illegal aliens. The project consists of 10 different faces that will be repeated 100 times each to add 1000 faces. The faces had been laser etched on raw canvas to allow the participant to use any kind of thread, yarn, wool, fabric, paint etc. So (sew) America Cares has a plan: to "sew" them back, to never allow these children to be lost again, to create a quilt of 1000 faces representing a portion of these children.
We cannot allow these traumatized children to disappear and in time, be forgotten.People are encouraged to stitch, sew, knit, knot, crochet, embroider, or braid these drawings so as to symbolically recover these children’s faces and lives again.
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So (sew) America Cares is an international call for people to participate and raise awareness as to the consequences of this immigration policy and its devastating effect on children. As citizen, artist, mother and a child that suffered being separated from my family for eight years, I am concerned about the hundreds of separated children across our country.
Magical Thinking
Aurora Molina moves away from perceptions of high and low art forms and of the gender, sex, and race of people who make art in favor of handmade. Artists like Aurora Molina, El Anatsui, Sheila Hicks, Lia Cooke, Nick Cave, & Chiachio & Giannone are connected with their rich pasts working with fiber, as a transportive quality, not only because it engages with the ancient technology of cloth-making; but also allows causes the artist to be caught up in rhythmic movements. Her return to her old memories as well as her new memories gives her personal histories with artisans who were quilters, seamstresses, menders, knitters, and embroiderers: in her effort to reacquaint the viewer with these storytellers. She makes us remember that art is more than oil painting on canvas, or the sculpture you back into when looking at those oil paintings.
Bernice Steinbaum
