Michelle Hinojosa: Logcabins

Stamps Gallery commissioned Michelle Hinojosa (MFA, 2023) to reimagine the pillars on Division Street that flank the Gallery. Hinojosa has created log cabin quilts to adorn the columns in front of Stamps Gallery. The log cabin quilts traditionally represent the warm hearth at the center of a home. This installation reflects on the interplay between home, placemaking, labor, and intergenerational memories of migration. Rather than quilting cotton designed to softly embrace the body, these quilts are sewn from outdoor grade, UV-resistant polyester. The quilt is an ode to Hinojosa’s grandmother who illegally crossed the US/​Mexico border holding her babies and her quilts. As she and her family drove across the United States to work in the fields of the Salinas Valley, the quilts offered a safe space for her and her family. Hinojosa celebrates their resilience to her grandmother and elders while also drawing attention to precarity and violence experienced by refugees and migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in our present today.

Artist’s bio:

Michelle Inez Hinojosa is an artist, educator, and researcher whose work is informed by Indigenous and Latine/​x/​a/​o studies. Born and raised in Texas, she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in both drawing and painting and art education with a minor in art history at the University of North Texas. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. She works with quilting, bead weaving, embroidery, jewelry, transparent film installations, painting, ceramics, and sculpture to honor and explore the history of migration in her family and humanize the current discourse around migration still occurring at the southern border. Alongside her artwork she maintains a writing practice to re-story, re-make, and re-claim the often subordinated narratives of Latinx, Chicanx, Mexican, and Texican peoples. 

Recently, Hinojosa was named an inaugural Creative Careers Artist in Residence at the University of Michigan, she has also attended residencies at Mildred’s Lane (Pennsylvania), Anderson Ranch Art Center (Aspen, CO) and The Cedars Union (Dallas, TX).