Alexa Rae Gordon

Alexa Can't Let Anything Go is an interactive installation that serves as a record of my implicit participation in material overconsumption, explored through cataloguing my own textile waste in a quilted wall hanging. Fabrics used to make this work were excavated from personal items that lost their practical value over time. Each item was threadbare or beyond the point of resale or donation, some made of fiber blends that prove nearly impossible to recycle.

Each quilted square within the wall hanging is precisely one and a quarter inches in side length, and appears initially as a small fragment of the larger pixelated gradient of color. Up close, each square reveals its own textures, patterns, and slight warp from the weight of textiles sewn adjacently. Individual swatches transform in color as they are nestled between opposing and similar hues. Occasional hints of garments-past are visible: a Nike swoosh from an old sock, a Ralph Lauren Polo logo embroidery, an exposed shoulder seam, a spliced T-shirt slogan, or a familiar knit pattern. These details peek out of the grid, declaring ghost-like recollections of the now reused textiles and garments that were deconstructed for the work. Quilt squares making up the wall hanging’s visual composition are arranged by color in a sweeping gradient formation. This consideration of color tone and value contrast mimics the ways in which many secondhand stores arrange clothing, as a means to create visual continuity for large collections of individually unique items.

Details about the 2,100 quilted squares are meticulously logged in the adjacent Rolodex 5024X. Each Rolodex card provides a storied individual history from one of the wall hanging’s quilted fabric squares. Personal associations and attachments are inventoried with dates and lifecycle information for each fabric. These brief writings cumulatively reflect our interactions and experiences with textile items in daily life: sentimental moments of joy, comical regret, haunting triggers of past pain, and overwhelmingly, the monotony of consumption and it’s inevitable accumulation. This work aims to pay archival attention to the intimate nature of discarded goods, exploiting the vast amount of trash we often unknowingly produce.