REDWORK

Comprised of lyric essays, traditional poems, and embroidered textile art created by the author, REDWORK examines subversive female art and revolution under the guise of domesticity. In her fifth collection, Guerrero researched the work of women in communities at home, in China, in Mexico, and in France to investigate needlework (piety) and language (rebellion). Exploring reproductive justice, guns, rape, gender dynamics, internalized sexism, familial and societal traditions, politics, mothers, and mothering, the tension between upholding traditions and survival becomes actualized in the female body’s ability to create what is necessary— from the making of milk to the inciting of revolution. REDWORK bridges the theory of quantum entanglement with ancestral wisdom resulting in the revalorization of women's work as inherited knowledge and survival. REDWORK threads, from one generation to the next, the inherent female cultivation of empathy for the collective adversaries, the collective ancestors, and the collective self. Stitch by stitch, Guerrero highlights women's ability to unravel, re-stitch, re-member their bodies and the bodies they make, noting embroidery as both a tool for and a product of the subversive and necessary magic contained within the (unvalued) body and the (unvalued) body of work.