LatinaLista — Artist Margaret Parker describes herself as an explorer.
My journeys take me to the territory of the personal, political, and spiritual. I have no preconceived notion before I start, and I use the medium that best fits the terraine. The evidence I bring back is my work. Since 9/11, I’ve been exploring what it means to be human in a global age. I see myself as an American, helping to build the New World.
Margaret’s latest journey is what she calls “Escape/Return Escape/Regreso” and she wants to take all of us along with her. Her idea is to have visitors to her installation walk through a tunnel woven out of reconstructed T-shirts.
Sketch of installation using T-shirts from both the United States and Latin America to form a tunnel representing migration into the United States from Latin America.
But she wants the T-shirts to be from both the United States and Latin America. The walk through the tunnel is supposed to mimic all those migrants who have immigrated to the United States — a representation of “an epic migration of people.”
However, not just any kind of T-shirt will do for this exhibit. Margaret is asking for short sleeved shirts with no collars or cuffs. The shirts should have text, logos or special traditional symbols that identify the country it came from. The idea is that the text from the shirts will be recorded before the shirts are cut apart to be woven into the tunnel.
After walking through the tunnel, visitors will be met by a display on the back wall, at the end of the tunnel, showing all the texts that were on the T-shirts.
Margaret is hoping to collect the T-shirts in time to create the installation to go on display during the
2009 Women’s Caucus for Art Annual Conference in Los Angeles next February.
You can either email Margaret, if you have a question or send the T-shirts to:
Margaret Parker
210 S. Ashley St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Since she wants to collect from Latin America too, if you have any friends south of the border share Margaret’s project with them too. They can be directed to her site which has instructions on what to do in Spanish.
