"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.

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.

Wrestling the Snake: Open Season in Political Art.

WRESTLING THE SNAKE: Open Season in Political Art

at THE PROJECTS|FATVillage

Curated by Leah Brown and Peter Symons

May 28 – Aug 12, 2016

PREVIEW May 27 | 7-9 pm

OPENING May 28 (With performance by David Rohn and Danilo De La

Torre) | June 25 | July 30 | 6-10 pm

THE PROJECTS | FATVillage

521 NW 1 st Ave

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

Press contact: Leah Brown, leah@fatvillage.com

“If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake

from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the

snake.” -- Mahatma Gandhi

WRESTLING THE SNAKE: Open Season in Political Art is a group art

exhibition of large-scale sculpture, installation, painting, performance, sound and video in

The Projects Art Exhibition Space in FATVillage in Fort Lauderdale. Each of the individual

works in the show is an examination of current political issues, particularly in light of the

presidential candidates’ race. What curators Leah Brown and Peter Symons have found is

that the South Florida artist community has been inspired in both positive and critical ways

by the 2016 election season, and are making work related to a real questioning of their

own and the nation’s political ethos.

"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"

AURORA MOLINA

fiber artist

Wrestling the Snake: Open Season in Political Art.