[The words, stitched in black, glare out from the center of a
handkerchief, decorated with a motif of pink roses: “Oh, my God.
This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” ]
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SEWING DISSENT WITH TEXTILE ARTIST DIANA WEYMAR  
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Celestina Billington
August 9, 2019
The Indypendent
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_ The words, stitched in black, glare out from the center of a
handkerchief, decorated with a motif of pink roses: “Oh, my God.
This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” _


Trump’s rude and stupid remarks appear even more so when threaded
through dainty cloth., Eston Baumer

 

The stark contrast of the language and the visual aesthetic encourage
the sort of cognitive dissonance that is now commonplace in American
political consciousness. Looking at the kerchief, one could imagine
blowing one’s nose comfortably into the cotton cloth, covering the
embedded “presidency” in snot.

This hand-sewn phrase, and thousands of others like it, line the walls
of Lingua Franca, a compact shop in Manhattan’s West Village
dedicated to embroidery that has been temporarily converted into an
optical echo chamber of Donald Trump quotes, his words fashioned to
textiles of varying styles. It’s all part of “Tiny Pricks,” a
public art project created and curated by artist Diana Weymar.

“I feel that Trump’s words are like pricks. I mean, I feel poked
and pricked,” Weymar tells _The Indypendent_. “This project is
trying to reverse that.”

Weymar’s own creations make up only a small portion of the display,
with the majority of the works being submissions from people all
across the United States. Through Instagram (@tinypricksproject), a
series of workshops and now via this traveling exhibition, thousands
of people have joined the project.

‘If we had to stitch everything that we said, we’d all be much
nicer people.’

Participants pick a quote from the president, sew it and mail their
work to Weymar, who finds a space for each amidst the growing
assemblage.

For Weymar, it’s a way of creating a space for reflection, the act
of stitching calms her. “I find that my mind slows down, that my
language slows down,” she says. “I think if we had to stitch
everything that we said we’d all be much nicer people.”

With over 33,000 followers on Instagram and daily posts that
consistently receive over a thousand likes, Weymar’s concept is
resonating. There’s a collective thread tying all these people
together: a shared desire to process the presidency and, more
specifically, to process the language deployed by the prick in the
White House.

This need for reflection is understandable. According to the
_Washington Post’s_ calculations, the president has so far made over
10,000 false or misleading statements. Beyond the falsehoods,
there’s also the unparalleled absurdity of so much of what Trump has
put out there. There’s his infamous “grab them by the pussy”
quip, in addition to many other inflammatory remarks, but there are
also downright bizarre phrases, such as “The kidney has a very
special place in the heart” and “I am a very stable genius.”

The “stable genius” comment was the first Weymar documented. Using
her grandmother’s needlework kit from the 1960s, she sewed the
letters with yellow thread over a print of red and purple florals. The
finished product and the multitude of responses it received on
Instagram served as the catalyst for “Tiny Pricks.” Weymar set out
to create one piece a week, though with the ongoing onslaught of
Trump’s ridiculous comments on Twitter and in the media, she began
producing more often and enlisting others, hosting workshops for her
friends and with the public.

Now she hopes to have 2,020 submissions logged by 2020, when the next
presidential election will start to heat up, and to display the needle
works in swing states.

“This project has been a call and response,” Weymar says. “The
next step is to move it into a more political realm, to really use it
as a tool to draw attention and awareness to the language that has
come out of this presidency.”

Weymar recently revisited the “stable genius” quote that started
the ongoing textile protest, posting her updated version to her
Instagram on July 19, the date marking 18 months since the original
went viral. The updated take on the quote is sewn on burlap and
decorated with colorful mushrooms. The choice to depict fungi, hinting
at psychedelia, suggests the statement is hallucinatory, rather than
that of a stable person.

This revisit feels more explicit than the original, the needlework
more steady. Weymar accompanied the post containing it with the
hashtag #DelusionsOfGenius. It’s an indication that “Tiny
Pricks’” foray into more blatant political messaging will be bold
while maintaining a sense for the kitsch and the cute. Weymar’s
growing army of seamstresses are wielding their needles like so many
tiny swords — and pricking back.

 

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