Who are we talking to, anyway?

In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager probes into space, which are still traveling through the outer reaches of our solar system. On both probes, scientists included a record, the Voyager Golden Record, encoded with sounds and images representing Earth. Among the sounds are human voices speaking 55 greetings in 55 different languages from around the world. The speakers send kind wishes and hellos to whoever is out in the universe. But there's no translation, no way to decode them, no way for extraterrestrials to understand their meaning.

Quilt patterns have their own history of embedded messages. They were used in the Underground Railroad to communicate with people escaping enslavement. Quilts memorialize loved ones and contain blessings for life milestones. They give fresh life to worn materials.

In these paintings, the 55 Voyager greetings are the base data, mixed up with 55 star-based quilt patterns. They are unintelligible messages, untranslatable translations, full of goodwill towards the unknown.