#WomenFolded

Throughout time, women have been ignored, shamed—even extinguished—for trying to improve a status quo of shameless inequity.

When our experiences are dismissed as exaggerated or untrue; when society pretends what we say does not exist; when we are silenced and become invisible—that is the ultimate glass ceiling.

I care for my own children while bearing witness to the child covered in dust in Aleppo, as if he were my own. I sob for the mothers who lost children at Sandy Hook, yet still gun laws remain unchanged. I shake—triggered—as the #MeToo accounts accumulate, my own memories rising to the surface. A room full of men sign bills into law affecting reproductive rights. I grieve while the stock-market rallies, no shortage of wealth for the few.

It may be for these reasons that #WomenFolded draws the most interest among the various postures I depict. She refuses to pretend that destruction and injustice are not still at work in our world.

I create her again and again. I revisit her in varied color arrangements and patterns in order to represent women of all backgrounds. She represents what it means to inherently know the way forward is to be present, to not look away but to be in grief—folded—so that we may rise up with strong voices again and again until finally, we are heard.