Threaded Together

Each year, Mayworks commissions an artist to develop the poster art for our annual festival. This year, Cleopatria Peterson’s Threaded Together reflects on the role of quiltmaking in uniting our struggles for better working and living conditions. View the work online or visit the installation in-person.

“Quilts and labour have always been connected, and I wanted to create an image that showed this work and craft. I was thinking of the works of black elders who would hang quilts in their windows to direct escaped slaves to safety, of the beautiful works from the Gee’s Bend community. I think of the AIDS memorial quilts, how people come together from different places, classes and backgrounds. Quilting and textile work have been used as radical praxis for a very long time and I really wanted to create an illustration that could depict that we all have a thread that binds us together, no matter what our practice is, we are connected. That is something that makes us stronger, because there is power in our unity.” – Cleopatria Peterson

Cleopatria Peterson (they/them) has a multi-disciplinary arts practice that explores the intersectionality of their identities as a black, non-binary transgender crip artist through the mediums of narrative, printmaking, illustration and education. They are a member of the Crip Arts Collective, have had their work shown at The Canadian Textile Museum, and are one of the co-founders of Old Growth Press. They graduated from the Cross Disciplinary Art: Publications program at OCAD U as the medal winner for their class (2020) and also hold a Bachelor’s of Design from TMU’s Fashion Communication program. Their first solo show Bestie Mart will be debuting at Tangled Art + Disability this May.