Unit of resistance: a call to auction by Jamie Stern 

Denna Jones examines how Woven Resistance transforms design into dissent, channeling resistance while raising funds for climate action and LGBTQ+ communities

Woven Resistance, an exhibition of handcrafted rugs by leading designers, is also a silent auction currently running until 28 February alongside the occasional viewings with Freehand Hotels. It supports the Sierra Club’s fight against climate change and PFLAG’s work with LGBTQ+ communities. 
 

Denna Jones explores how design becomes dissent and how craft carries a powerful political voice.

RESIST. PERSIST. REPEAT.

Woven in wool and bamboo silk with a loop-and-cut pile that emphasises its high-contrast ‘shout’, Jamie Stern’s RESIST rug is a centrepiece of Woven Resistance — an exhibition featuring thirteen unique rugs by thirteen American designers.

RESIST channels the popular three-word protest slogan while simultaneously expressing the exhibition’s broader mandate: to resist climate change, persist against anti-democratic politics and repeat the need to embrace the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

Conceived and guided by Stern, CEO of Jamie Stern Design, the exhibition gains attention during its month-long, coast-to-coast, whistle-stop tour.

In partnership with Freehand Hotels, it hosts one-day events showcasing the rugs in New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles, while the online silent auction runs concurrently. Proceeds benefit Sierra Club and PFLAG.

Woven Resistance as a call to action

The collection ‘expresses my opposition to the unravelling of our democracy,’ says Stern. Participating designers are Penelope Fischer-White, Suzette Subance, Suzanne Tick, Gabriele Rosina, Michael Wolk, Jen McDermott, Matt Goodrich, Carl D’Aquino, Sara Talleux, William Oberlin, Roya Gholizadeh and Jeannene Doub. They are given creative freedom to explore ‘stories of resilience, unity and hope.’

Yet it is Stern’s own RESIST rug that offers the most direct confrontation. His design tactically employs Arial Black font, a ‘protest’ typography known for bold, weighty legibility from a distance.

Pre-installed for free on billions of digital devices, Stern’s choice feels democratic, while the font’s clunky, bold aesthetic taps into a visual vernacular of urgency and grassroots protest.

The result is a woven transformation of a common bumper-sticker slogan into something much greater and more meaningful— a “we are the people” moment that echoes the international cry: ‘The people united will never be defeated.’

While fundraising is the exhibition’s goal, raising awareness is its mandate. Stern’s rug artfully engages with Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that ‘the medium is the message.’ In Stern’s hands — and throughout the exhibition — the graphic ‘message’ and the tactile ‘medium’ of wool, bamboo silk and the weaving process itself are inseparable agents of defiance.

The invitation is clear: view the work, register to bid and take part before the auction closes on 28 February.

Bravo, Jamie Stern and the artists of Woven Resistance. We hear you and we agree.

Words by Denna Jones