War Rug I (Immigrant Detention)

2020 | 4ft x 6ft x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references immigration detention and exploitation along the US/Mexico border.

Iconography: border wall fencing, ICE and Border Patrol bullet-proof vests, backpacks, prison toilet / water fountain combos, (reports surfaced that when these combined facilities broke, women in detention centers were instructed to simply “drink out of the toilet bowl”), thermometer (detention center cells are often kept at freezing temperatures and referred to by migrants as “hieleras” or “freezers”), slashed water bottles (videos surfaced of border patrol officers intentionally damaging or contaminating water bottles left in the desert for migrants by NGOs), teddybears (migrant demographics increasingly include children, who are traumatically separated from families), highway overpass / prison tent cities / Walmarts (all were repurposed as detention centers).

War Rug II (Mass Incarceration) 

2020 | 28in x 64in x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references the ongoing violence of mass incarceration in the US.

Iconography: bail bond signs (monetary bail disproportionally impacts poor communities, often forcing low-income people accused crimes to take plea deals regardless of their innocence), slave shackles and handcuffs (the history of US prisons is inextricably linked with the history of slavery and in fact grew out of the need to incarcerate formerly enslaved people to regain free labor), voting stickers (felons continue to be politically disenfranchised even after they are set free, as many states take away voting rights for life), Unicor logo and shooting targets (Unicor is the largest for-profit prison industry that uses prisoners as as cheap labor to produce products for the police and judicial systems that incarcerate prisoners to begin with— such as police training shooting targets).  

War Rug III (El Paso Shooting) 

2020 | 28in x 48in x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug iconography references the 2019 racially-motivated hate crime and mass shooting in an El Paso Walmart.

Iconography: the semiautomatic rifle, ammunition as well as ear protection used by the shooter, police crime scene markers, the 8Chan logo (the extremist right-wing online forum where the shooter posted a racist, anti-hispanic manifesto before the shooting), 22 Walmart logos (in reference to the 22 victims killed), and map of El Paso.

War Rug IV (Las Vegas Shooting) 

2020 | 28in x 48in x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug iconography references the 2017 mass shooting at Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.

Iconography: Two types of semiautomatic weapons and ammunition used in the shooting (which comprised 22 of the 24 weapons used overall), Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino with windows broken where the shooter fired through the glass, Mandalay Bay poker chips (with numbers referencing the 59 victims), police crime scene markers, and bump stocks (the then legal rifle augmentation which allowed the shooter to convert semiautomatic rifles into automatic, aiding the shooter to injure as many people as possible.)

War Rug V (Flint Water Crisis) 

2020 | 33in x 4ft x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn 

Rug iconography references the ongoing water crisis in Flint Michigan which began in 2014 and resulted in the lead poisoning of tens of thousands of residents including 12,000 children.

Iconography: Lead periodic symbol, brown water in water bottles (residents had been documenting the discoloration of their water in bottles for months before anything was investigated), brown water in baby bottles (the impact of lead poisoning on Flint’s children has yet to be fully assessed— lead has delayed, devastating results on childhood development), Flint water tower, and EPA logo (along with Governor Snyder, the EPA failed to act for months).

War Rug VI (War on Drugs) 

2020 | 33in x 6ft x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references Reagan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act (War on Drugs) which began minimum sentencing and extreme maximum sentencing for drug-related crime, resulting in the mass incarceration of POC.

Iconography: Uneven justice scales with crack / powdered cocaine (the criminalization of crack (mostly used by POC) disproportionally outweighed powder (mostly used by whites), marijuana (the majority of drug-related offenses relate to marijuana which is now decriminalized or legal in many States yet prisoners continue to serve multi-decades long sentences, D.A.R.E. logo, and weapons used by SWAT teams for drug raids, reflecting the militarization of police.

War Rug VII (Police Brutality) 

2020 | 29in x 6ft x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references the ongoing brutalization of communities of color and upholding of white supremacy by the US police.

Iconography: thin blue line flag, broken body cameras, surplus military weapons used by police through the 1033 Program, and symbols referencing the legal / innocuous circumstances surrounding the murder of unarmed Black people by police in the past 5 years. Victims include: Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Eric Garner, Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Dijon Kizzee, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Stephon Clark, Trayvon Martin, John Crawford III, and George Floyd.

War Rug VIII (Mishandling of the COVID-19 Pandemic) 

2020 | 4ft x 36in x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Trump administration.

Iconography: refrigerated morgue trucks, biohazard funeral wreath, stock-piled toilet paper, COVID tests / swabs, wildly inadequate Trump Administration $1200 stimulus check, “Sorry We’re Closed” sign, hand sanitizer, ventilator with splitter, N95 mask / trash bag PPE (lack of Federal preparedness and supply chain oversight led to shortages of critical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. Many hospitals at the height of the pandemic resorted to using trash bags as protective equipment), Hydroxychloroquine, injections of bleach (President Trump was lambasted by the medical community after suggesting research into whether coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into the body), Zoom & Amazon Logos, broken CDC Logo, and President Trump quote, “It is what it is” (August 4, 2020. At the time of the quote 1,000 people were dying in the US each day of COVID-19 and 156,000 had already died of the virus.)

War Rug IX (Thoughts & Prayers) 

2021 | 32in x 48in x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references performative activism and empty gestures by politicians in lieu of supporting actual structural change.

Iconography: social media sharing (Facebook and Instagram “like” buttons), hashtags, Twitter, Blackout Tuesday black squares, prayer hand emojis, colored awareness ribbons, military purple hearts and a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte: “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”

War Rug X (Banana Republics) 

2021 | 33in x 6ft x 1in | Tufted rug using acrylic and wool yarn

Rug references US corporate and military malfeasance in Central America and the Caribbean through the banana industry and creation of so-called “Banana Republics.”

Iconography: Chiquita Banana Logo (United Fruit, the American corporation that would terrorize Latin America for decades, later became Chiquita Brands International), octopus tentacles (United Fruit Co. was known as El Pulpo (The Octopus) because its tentacles reached into all facets of Central America), railroads (the success of the United Fruit Co. in Latin America was largely predicated on their control of infrastructure. They constructed railroads to both move bananas to market, while leveraging railroad construction for sweetheart land deals and tax breaks from Central American governments), The Great White Fleet (United Fruit’s fleet of ships that allowed them to dominate the export trade of bananas from Central America), Tokens (United Fruit routinely paid employees with company tokens instead of money—similar to company scrip in the coal mining Appalachia—exploiting workers by forcing them to only shop at company stores), bags of cocaine (American corporate and military malfeasance created power vacuums in Central America that drug cartels have exploited to deadly effect, with America as the largest drug consumer), Mosin-Nagant & AK47 Rifles (reliable Russian rifles that were the preferred rifle by rebel groups in Latin America), bananas, Marxist literature (it was common practice for American CIA agents to smear leftist Latin American regimes as Communists (and often plant Marxist literature) to justify invasion and stoke Cold War fears), CIA logo (the CIA was a key player in protecting American corporate interests while waging a proxy Cold War throughout the second half of the 20th century), radio tower (during the CIA-backed Guatemalan coup of 1954, the agency set up a fake radio station—Radio Liberación—to deliberately exaggerate the strength and size of a covertly supported American invasion), maps of a number of the so-called “Banana Republics” Nicaragua, Panama, Jamaica, Honduras, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, & Guatemala.