Pandemics may end, but their effects remain.

Stitching the Situation is a large-scale, communal textile project that documents the impact of COVID-19 in the US through collaboratively embroidered tapestries. Each stitch represents a person who has contracted COVID (color coded blue) or died from it (color coded red), as reported by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus database. Thousands of stitches render images of personal experiences of, and perspectives on, the pandemic, thus creating both a visualization of data and an archive of this time.

Those most impacted by the virus are materialized in the stitches themselves, and the individual pieces (each represents one day of the pandemic period) manifest specific experiences—whether they be stories or images in memoriam of people who died of COVID, bereaved families and caregivers, people living with Long COVID, healthcare providers and other front line workers, folks who lost employment, businesses, or housing, or people living on reservations, in prisons, and other living spaces where access to protective measures and treatment were limited or nonexistent. Most who contribute to this project are themselves deeply affected by COVID.

Social and political change is often slow; this project aims to catalyze the reach of digital networks and collaborative making practices to cultivate an archive at a pace that can support and enable lasting social cohesion and equitable change.