The MAGA Hat Collection 2019-ongoing

An ongoing series of work constructed entirely of MAGA hats that have been ripped apart. The series was started at the end of 2018.

The times we live in call for work that aggressively confronts the Americans who are complicit in this administration’s cruelty and destruction of our Democracy. MAGA hat wearers love to coyly claim that the iconic red symbols they sport on their heads are innocuous. I cathartically rip these hats apart to reject this claim, then manipulate the pieces into objects that function as corrective physical manifestations of the truth.

Cult Coat (in progress)

2024, hand embroidery with deconstructed Breitbart, Newsmax, Fox News & MAGA hats, tactical patches, canvas, buckles. (working photo), part of the MAGA hat series.

Hate Hat

2019-2021, deconstructed MAGA hats, cotton, thread, 28 x 9 x 12", edition of 3 & AP. Manuel De Santaren collection, two remaining.

Ripping MAGA Hats in front of the White House

In August of 2020, separated from Donald Trump by three layers of fencing, I sat as close as I could to the White House, and destroyed symbols of white supremacism. I tore apart MAGA hats, and ripped out the white stars of a US flag, in order to replace them with hand-embroidered stars representing the actual skin tones of US citizens for an in-progress piece entitled “Reparation: Where Our Greatness Lies.”

Hate Hat at the Baum Gallery

Hate Hat installation at The Baum Gallery, Central Arkansas University, 2021

Social Murder

2020, deconstructed MAGA hats, cotton, thread, 5 x 8.5 x 4", from the MAGA Hat Collection. (working photo). I cut up individual MAGA letters and pieced them together to make the new text.

Social Murder (detail)

2020, deconstructed MAGA hats, cotton, thread, 5 x 8.5 x 4", from the MAGA Hat Collection. (working photo). I cut up individual MAGA letters and pieced them together to make the new text.

Social Murder at The Phillips Collection

“Social Murder” on display at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

Complicit

2021, official MAGA hat, letters from deconstructed MAGA hat pieced together and appliqued to the front, with embroidery. 5 x 6 x 10”. York College Collection, York, PA.

"Hate Hat II, Dismantled: The Disease That Thought It Was The Cure"

2019, unravelled MAGA hat (ripped apart thread by thread), baseball cap display case (mirrors, plexiglass, wood), engraved brass plate, 8 x 9 x 8.5”.

Only The Terrorized Own The Right To Name Symbols Of Terror

2019, armband made of deconstructed MAGA hats, cotton, thread, 5 1/4 x 6 x 6”.

Eminent Domain For Unwilling Vessels

2019, deconstructed MAGA hats, buckram, cotton, thread, sewn into handmaid’s bonnet, 13” x 9” x 8”

When We Get To America

2019, hand embroidery on cotton, 10.5 x 13” (with I.M.)

When We Get To America, installed

“When We Get To America”, installed at the Jen Tough Gallery pop up in San Francisco, 2019

Dreams of Innocents Lost (installation view)

2019, Deconstructed MAGA hats, child’s sleeping mat, mylar blanket, thread, felt, hand embroidery on cotton, 48 x 22 x 3"

Detail, "Dreams Of Innocents Lost"

Herd, As Led By Wolf & Fox

2019, deconstructed MAGA hats, taxidermied sheep head. (working photo)

Reparation: Where Our Greatness Lies"

2019 - 2022, 57 x 112”, cotton U.S. flag, thread. All the machine-embroidered white stars ripped out and replaced with hand-embroidered stars representing all the melanin scale skin tones of U.S. citizens. See American Diversity Flag for backstory.

Detail, "Reparation: Where Our Greatness Lies"

2019 - 2022, 57 x 112”, cotton U.S. flag, thread. All the machine-embroidered white stars were ripped out and replaced with hand-embroidered stars representing all the melanin scale skin tones of U.S. citizens. See American Diversity Flag for backstory.