Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

C. Jane Run

C. Jane Run is the largest textile produced by Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, an Indigenous woman fiber artist. Through technical skill and powerful subject matter, her work challenges the idea that so-called crafts, such as textiles, are feminine and irrelevant when compared to fine arts like painting and sculpture. The work features a richly interwoven mosaic of safety pins, glass beads, and recycled clothing pinned together and used as the support for a golden colored silkscreen print. This particular image is a visual motif that the artist has incorporated into her work since the early 1990s: a family holding hands and running. The image comes from a traffic sign developed by the California Department of Transportation. It was implemented to alert drivers to migrants running across Interstate 5 in Southern California. The traffic sign has since become an iconic symbol of the immigration crisis along the southern border of the United States. While the traffic sign reduces migrants to a hazard warning, the artist’s use of clothing foregrounds the personal stories of the individuals who flee to the US in search of a better life. The image has personal resonance for Jimenez Underwood, as her father, a Mexican migrant of Huichol descent, was deported several times during her childhood.