Jeffrey Gibson introduced a series of textile-based works in the form of quilts beginning in 2019. His interest in the craft goes back to his childhood and the quilts made by his grandmothers. This body of work began with leftover textiles that were originally printed for his garments from designs and photographs of past works. In this reciprocal process, new work is pulled from an inventory of recycled imagery while the off-cuts of recent projects are transformed into seeds of future work.

This series of quilts were made in collaboration with the quilter Robert Bemis, whose machine-based free form drawing style adds a wild pattern of stitches to Gibson’s energetic textile collages. Imprinted texts declaring statements such as “POWERFUL BECAUSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT” and “THEY SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE” speak to diverse conceptions of gender and cultural identity, and the radical force of self-affirmation.