Nana’s Napkins consists of secondhand cloth napkins given to the artist by their grandmother. Installed on a white gallery wall in a loose grid, the napkins retain their folded shapes, emphasizing their everyday use and domestic origins. Family photographs and Google Earth screen captures from Akron, Ohio—the artist’s hometown—are dyed into the fabric surfaces. The images appear faint, muddy, and imperfect, blending into the cloth and sometimes dissolving into abstract shapes. Google Earth imagery is used to fill gaps in personal memory and the family archive, raising questions about mediation, autonomy, and hierarchies of remembering. By preserving the napkins’ creases and signs of wear, the work highlights the ways histories, traditions, and memories move through ordinary domestic textiles, carried imperfectly across time.
