Love Your Neighbor: A solo exhibition by Aleah Washington

Love Your Neighbor is a series created by Aleah Washington to explore the effects of historical maps. Formal quilted patterns relate to the home space while textures and color schemes represent the surrounding environment. Through collaging sourced fabrics, she uses improvisational piecing and Kansas City’s history of color-coded redlined maps that discriminate against people as influence to make unity through proximity. J.C. Nichols founded suburbs and created these maps that determined the value of communities for more than 230 cities across the U.S that racially divided neighborhoods. The psychological effect of time and division are explored through bringing back value to disregarded fabrics while exploring urban decay as a lasting outcome of gentrification.