free speech zone

2025

Quilted Passport

“A democracy for some- a democracy of convenience- is no democracy at all.” Mahmoud Khalil

Addressing the mythologies of American freedom and democracy, this U.S. passport serves as a location that holds within it both personal testimony and historical violence

This quilt incorporates 2 letters from Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose detention and visa revocation underscore the American state’s pattern of silencing and criminalizing dissent, especially when that dissent exposes U.S. complicity in global injustice.

“of the people, by the people, for the people,” This hollow repetition is paraded in a structure that actively denies free speech to those who resist or critique its policies. a structure built on bloodied ideologies of erasing and conquering. a structure that truly won't survive unless it is rebuilt from the ground up.