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...

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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.