The Elegy Quilts of Jesse Krimes
A quilts logic is cumulative: scraps that might otherwise signify nothing alone are pressed into relationship until they begin to speak collectively. In the work of Jesse Krimes, textiles function simultaneously as material, archive and surrogate presence.
Now on view at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Elegy Quilts, presented in partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia, brings together selections from Krimes’s ongoing Elegy Quilt series alongside Riverside, a newly commissioned collaborative work developed through the organisation’s Restorative Justice programme. The exhibition positions quilting as a social and material practice through which experiences of incarceration, memory and reintegration are articulated collectively.
Jesse Krimes. Red Eagle, 2020. Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles, 95 x 72 inches. © Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Drawing on his own experience of serving a six-year federal prison sentence, Krimes gathers donated garments and textile fragments from currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and reconstitutes them into intricately pieced quilts. The materials remain central to the work: worn shirts, domestic cottons and fabrics shaped by repeated use and bodily proximity. Cloth here carries traces of contact, labour and daily routine.
To create the series, Krimes invited incarcerated collaborators to describe a memory of home and to select an animal as a symbolic stand-in for themselves. The resulting quilts, each titled after a prison or jail, depict domestic interiors from which the human figure has been removed. Animals move through bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms instead, functioning as proxies for absent subjects. The quilts construct portraits through fragments, interiors and remembered objects.
Jesse Krimes. Aurora, 2021. Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles, 90 x 57 inches. © Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
The decision to work within American quilting traditions is both material and historical. Quilting in the United States has long functioned as a communal form through which personal and collective histories are preserved in cloth. From the improvisational geometries associated with Gee's Bend quilters to the commemorative scale of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, quilts have served as records of mourning, labour, survival and collective authorship. Krimes’s work situates itself within this broader lineage of textile-based storytelling and communal making.
Jesse Krimes. Florence, 2021. Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles, 89 x 65 1/2 inches. © Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Riverside shifts the emphasis of the series from recollection toward projection. Developed through workshops with eight graduates of Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice reentry programme, the quilt emerged from collaged self-portraits constructed around three symbolic elements: a piece of furniture, an animal and a personal object associated with identity. Krimes later synthesised these individual collages into a single quilted composition.
Jesse Krimes. Marion, 2022. Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles, 89 x 68 inches. © Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
The exhibition also includes the workshop collages and studies for a forthcoming mural at 990 Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia’s Spring Arts District. Seen alongside the quilts, these preparatory works emphasise process as much as finished form: fragments gathered, rearranged and held in relation. That structure of assembly mirrors the logic of the quilts themselves, where meaning accumulates gradually through repetition, juxtaposition and shared material histories.
...
Further Information:
Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quilts is on view until November 1, 2026, at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.
-
...
Image Credits:
Lead: Jessie Krimes, Riverside, 2026. Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles, 87 1/2 x 54 inches. Photo credit: © Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
All further images as credited in captions.