Quilting Terra Nullius

On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law, constructing 160 acres of the American West as “public land” for settlement. By 1900, eighty million acres of that land had become private property.

This project brings terra nullius and materialities of ground together to construct quilts made from dirt-dyed fabric. The patterns follow those created by settlers moving west. Bringing specific expectations of a life that did not exist there, quilts became a visual language and embodied practice that promoted, and recorded, settler colonialism.

Quilts, like land art, sought to conquer, but at an unremarkable scale compared to earthworks. Taught through assimilation education, quilting had the power to alter an individual and change cultures. The practice is an embodied knowledge: terra nullius as craft. This body of work is being assembled in a forthcoming book titled Quilting Terra Nullius, selected for publishing by NoRoutine Books.