Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quilts
Jesse Krimes: *Elegy Quilts* presents selections from the artist’s ongoing series of textile works examining the personal and emotional effects of incarceration. Drawing on his own experience with the U.S. carceral system, Krimes transforms donated clothing and fabric fragments from currently and formerly incarcerated people into intricately patterned quilts that consider memory, grief, alienation, comfort, belonging, and resilience.
Organized with Mural Arts Philadelphia, the exhibition also debuts *Riverside*, a newly commissioned quilt created from a collaborative Restorative Justice program. Eight young adults worked with Krimes in workshops to make collages based on a piece of furniture, an animal, and a personal object representing identity. Krimes combined their designs into a single quilt that imagines future selves and amplifies the participants’ experiences. The collages also informed a large mural recently unveiled at 990 Spring Garden Street, offering insight into Krimes’s collaborative process and the role of community in resistance, care, and collective possibility.
When: May 1, 2026–November 1, 2026
Venue: The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Location: First Floor Gallery
Tickets: Free, with a suggested $10 donation; included with general admission
Exhibition focus: The *Elegy Quilts* are titled after U.S. prisons and jails and begin with memories of home described by incarcerated collaborators. Krimes pairs those domestic recollections with symbolic animal figures that act as stand-ins and protectors for people obscured by incarceration. Empty rooms and missing human figures evoke absence, estrangement, yearning, and the challenges of release and reintegration, while the quilts’ everyday materials emphasize dignity, connection, and the persistence of belonging.
Featured work: *Riverside* is a new quilt based on workshops with eight participants in Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice program. The exhibition includes the participants’ source collages alongside the finished quilt.
Collage artists: Hannah Bickert, December “Ablessing” Collins, Tajee Flamer, Tasheema Flamer, Joyzoé Montes-Paris, Tysean Moore, Eleonore “Tiny” Noncent, and Rahsaan Standback
Artist: Jesse Krimes is a multimedia artist whose practice addresses systems of power and control, particularly criminal and racial justice. During a six-year prison sentence, he made and smuggled out artwork, created art programs, and helped establish artist collectives. He founded and leads the Center for Art & Advocacy, a national organization supporting justice-impacted artists. Krimes received an Emmy Award for the documentary *Art and Krimes* and has exhibited at institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Art for Justice Fund.
Curators: Kelly Shindler, Executive Director of The Fabric Workshop and Museum, with Hilde Nelson, FWM Curatorial Fellow
Presented by: The Fabric Workshop and Museum in partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia
Media: The exhibition has been featured by PBS NewsHour’s “Art in Action” series.