Consuelo Jimenez Underwood American, b. 1949

Though one of Jimenez Underwood’s smaller pieces, HiWays to Heaven is packed with imagery. On the top and bottom of the tapestry are roads, referencing California’s Highway 99, which the artist traveled throughout her childhood after picking crops with her family. Through the middle is the familiar outline of the U.S.-Mexico border, made from gold metallic thread. The deep blue heavens remix the U.S. flag’s canton full of stars, and the stripes are red, white, and green to incorporate the Mexican flag. These stripes can also be thought of as highways, paving the way to paradise, but the artist asks how they can lead to heaven if they only move from side to side.

"Attentive to maps since the second or third grade, Jimenez Underwood has long understood how maps "naturalize" reality and relationships. Maps provided her with global awareness, but it was not the innocence and awe expected by the romantic view of children. She recognized during primary school that maps charts exploration, division, and conquest. Avoiding a simplistic view of maps, the artist has frequently experimented with mapmaking conventions, laying latitude and longitude lines over so-called scientific depictions of geographic territories." Karen Mary Davalos, "Space, Place, and Belongings in Borderlines," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022