No longer willing to carry the individual burden of my student loan debt alone, I began making flag bunting banners in October 2023 when the federal pause on student loan repayment resumed. This project is a 12-month durational installation and is currently housed at Springboard for the Arts in Fergus Falls, MN.

Each month I add a new hand stitched, painted and machine sewn banner to the installation to represent the accumulation of interest on loans, the crushing emotional weight of making payments and the slow, incremental decrease of the total debt owed. Each banner has a corresponding short footnote essay which you can read below.

By making my debt visible I ask the viewer to think about how student loan debt functions in relation to the public good of higher education. By publicizing my individual debt burden I invite us to think about the collective relationship to student loan debt in hopes of inspiring public policy changes for the elimination of student loan debt for previous, current, and future learners.