Growing up in the South, I understood myself as a Black American within the safety of home, but beyond those walls, that identity was constantly tested. A Stitch in Black America unravels the tensions between Blackness, queerness, and national belonging, exposing the paradoxes of patriotism, resistance, and survival. I work with materials that dictate who is welcome and who is not—flags, durags, welcome mats—symbols that carry the weight of history yet remain unstable. I am drawn to the coded languages of Black domesticity, the objects passed down as both shields and signifiers.

Through stitched textiles, constructed forms, and reconfigured materials, I transform these markers of survival into tools of critique, confronting a country that demands loyalty while denying belonging. These works exist between inheritance and refusal, between what was imposed and what we choose to carry forward. A Stitch in Black America asks: What does it mean to claimed—or unclaimed—by a country that demands loyalty and silence? And what happens when the symbols meant to contain us no longer hold?