Every Rug I Ruined in Chicago

This rug is a map of Chicago, crocheted from fabrics I brought back when I moved home to India: leftover project scraps, clothes I no longer wore, pieces from every apartment I lived in. Its fibres already hold my experiences of the city.
In Chicago, my rugs were always messy, marked by food and drinks, art materials, and the accidents of daily life. Those stains became records of time spent there, traces of my life in those apartments and in the city.
On this map, cups, glasses and other containers mark the sites of specific memories: My homes, my college, my workplaces, friends’ homes, neighbourhoods I enjoyed eating and drinking in, and more. Their placement also reflects how I did everything on my rugs – eating, working, resting, and being with people.
Visitors are invited to walk across the rug and move through the city, stepping carefully between these precarious objects, much like how I skirt around these memories that fill me with longing. If something spills, the stain remains, becoming a new layer of memory. The piece holds both my experiences of the past and new ones added by others in the present.