Unfolded Narratives Workshop with Jenny Yurshansky

Join teaching artist Jenny Yurshansky in an engaging, all-ages workshop that facilitates the exploration of one’s individual family narrative and encourages shared discussion amongst the participants, culminating in the creation of paper fortune tellers which visualize the way chance is embedded into the history of our family narratives.

This session will be an opportunity to focus on the complexity of what it means to think about home, origin, and place, especially in one’s own family history. How are the patterns that exist in our own families indicators of larger socio-historical patterns that we can identify or contextualize ourselves within? How can this be understood in the framework of immigration and displacement? Artist Jenny Yurshansky will share information with you about her practice and how she deals with these questions in her work.

Jenny Yurshansky’s practice is deeply informed by being a refugee. Through a research-based approach, she explores the trauma of displacement, interrogating notions of belonging and otherness within the frames of landscape, historical documents, and social constructs. Formally, this manifests as absence, loss, or erasure.

Her long-term projects form intertwined narratives and span the mediums of sculpture, photography, installation, and writing. She will also guide participants through visualizing, conceptualizing, and crafting their own story which will take the form of a small handheld sculpture. The pieces that participants will create will also be scanned and compiled to make a larger “quilted” image that will be exhibited at 18th Street Arts Center. This collaborative creation is designed to reflect upon the myriad forms in which histories, traumas, social movements, and how small decisions have untold consequences that are experienced at the individual level.

This is the second workshop in the Unfolded Narrative series at the Wende Museum. Both new and returning participants are invited to take part.

Guests of all ages are welcome to register, with particular encouragement for intergenerational family groups. Advance registration is required and slots are limited.

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