Quilts, Migration, and Human Rights

Quilts, Migration, and Human Rights

Friday, October 23, 2020

In conjunction with our pop-up exhibition, Hostile Terrain 94, Jonathan Gregory, assistant curator of exhibitions, will speak about how quilts have been used as a medium for social and political activism and advocacy in a panel discussion titled, “Quilts, Migration, and Human Rights.”

The event is Friday, October 23 from 12-1:30 p.m. via Zoom.

Please register at https://bit.ly/3k7HAex

The panel will be hosted by the Robert J. Kutak Center for the Teaching & Study of Applied Ethics as part of their monthly Brown Bag Luncheon series. The panelists are: 

  • Dr. Claire Nicholas, Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design
  • Dr. Jonathan Gregory, International Quilt Museum
  • Dr. Courtney Hillebrecht, Political Science and Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs
  • Dr. Effie Athanassopoulos, Anthropology and Classics, School of Global Integrative Studies
  • Adria Sanchez-Chaidez, Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design

The panel members played an integral role in bringing the international, participatory art installation, Hostile Terrain 94 to Nebraska. The exhibition is a large quilt hung with tags identifying migrants who died in the Sonoran Desert between the mid-1990s and 2019. The discussion will provide an overview of the exhibition and its themes and highlight the human rights dimensions of the crisis at the US border as well as the policies contributing to the crisis. In addition to the role of quilts as a medium for social change, panelists will consider the ethics of representing violence/pain/suffering through physical remains and the material culture of migration.