BIAXILLY-ORIENTED
POLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE
2024 - ONGOING
On March 27, 2023, a fire inside a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez killed forty men from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela. Security footage showed guards walking away as the fire spread, leaving the detainees locked inside. The facility, operated by Mexico’s National Migration Institute, had been repeatedly denounced for overcrowding and unsafe conditions.
In September 2025, a federal judge ordered former INM director Francisco Garduño to issue a public apology to the victims’ families as part of a conditional legal agreement. The act was presented as a procedural requirement rather than an acknowledgment of responsibility, and many relatives rejected it as insufficient.
After the fire, photographs showed the bodies covered with metallic emergency blankets—Biaxially Oriented Polyethylene Terephthalate (BOPET), commercially known as Mylar. This polymer is commonly used in U.S. detention centers and “ice boxes,” where it oscillates between care and control: an emblem of “protection” that also exposes the violence of neglect. It has become a visual shorthand for crisis, appearing in both state documentation and protest imagery.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
This project is a response. I am weaving forty blankets, one for each victim. Each measures 52 × 84 inches, the standard size of a commercial space blanket. Using a 24-shaft electronic dobby loom and custom software, I design a unique pattern that encodes each person’s name, age, country of origin, place, and year of death. The information is translated into geometric form—text broken down into pixel-like units, data points shaping the structure and rhythm of the weave. Some details remain legible, while others dissolve into abstraction.
The warp is black cotton; the weft combines cotton and metallic Mylar. The process introduces time, tension, and individuality—each blanket carrying its own rhythm and imperfection, its own mark of presence.
Space blankets, designed for short-term survival, have become a symbol of disposability within the migration system. By weaving with this material, I transform it from an object of emergency into one of permanence.
In September 2025, a federal judge ordered former INM director Francisco Garduño to issue a public apology to the victims’ families as part of a conditional legal agreement. The act was presented as a procedural requirement rather than an acknowledgment of responsibility, and many relatives rejected it as insufficient.
After the fire, photographs showed the bodies covered with metallic emergency blankets—Biaxially Oriented Polyethylene Terephthalate (BOPET), commercially known as Mylar. This polymer is commonly used in U.S. detention centers and “ice boxes,” where it oscillates between care and control: an emblem of “protection” that also exposes the violence of neglect. It has become a visual shorthand for crisis, appearing in both state documentation and protest imagery.
This project is a response. I am weaving forty blankets, one for each victim. Each measures 52 × 84 inches, the standard size of a commercial space blanket. Using a 24-shaft electronic dobby loom and custom software, I design a unique pattern that encodes each person’s name, age, country of origin, place, and year of death. The information is translated into geometric form—text broken down into pixel-like units, data points shaping the structure and rhythm of the weave. Some details remain legible, while others dissolve into abstraction.
The warp is black cotton; the weft combines cotton and metallic Mylar. The process introduces time, tension, and individuality—each blanket carrying its own rhythm and imperfection, its own mark of presence.
Space blankets, designed for short-term survival, have become a symbol of disposability within the migration system. By weaving with this material, I transform it from an object of emergency into one of permanence.
