When I started this memory quilt, I wasn't expecting to tear myself apart with every stitch. However, in 2017, I was introduced to Frida Guerrera's investigative journalistic work about femicides in Mexico. The bodies of 1,215, the other thousands still NN (Jane Doe), and the approximately 9 women killed every day in Mexico were urging me to finish this work, which turned out to be extremely painful.
I read each one of the 1,215 reports about their deaths. While working on this quilt, I had nightmares. One night, I dreamt of a woman being raped and her leg being cut out from her body. The following day, I read a story about a woman found on the side of the road with a decapitated portion. No one deserves to die like these women did. My emotions turned into physical pain; their countless hours of sewing eventually took a toll on my body, forcing me to take work breaks. After my sewing machine broke, I bought a new one, and it broke, too. So I ended up finishing the quilt with my vintage Kenmore. The long hours of sewing in silence prompted unpleasant, raising thoughts, "Why can't my thoughts just go away?" I thought. To ease my studies, I placed the poem from my sewing machine from "Libros del Chilam Balam" and memorized it.
The names on the quilt reminded me of the women I know. Those hours of solitude in front of my sewing machine forcefully invited me to accept the complicated relationships with some women in my life. I sewed 1,215 pains that became my pains. I am now bounded to them. I know their stories, and I told them mine. ISo many often wanted to give up., but I could not abandon them even while drowning in my own pain. I will miss thinking about them. I will miss the purpose they gave me for 10 months. Any pain or discomfort I could have experienced was nothing compared to the 1,215 and so many more women who have suffered because I'm still alive, and they are not.
Read my interview with BuzzFeed Mexico HERE.
The names on the quilt reminded me of the women I know. Those hours of solitude in front of my sewing machine forcefully invited me to accept the complicated relationships with some women in my life. I sewed 1,215 pains that became my pains. I am now bounded to them. I know their stories, and I told them mine. ISo many often wanted to give up., but I could not abandon them even while drowning in my own pain. I will miss thinking about them. I will miss the purpose they gave me for 10 months. Any pain or discomfort I could have experienced was nothing compared to the 1,215 and so many more women who have suffered because I'm still alive, and they are not.
Read my interview with BuzzFeed Mexico HERE.
The Process, Patch Work, 2018. 1,215 women were killed in Mexico in 2017
