I am giving a virtual lecture about my Free Your Mind; Social Justice Art Project next week on March 28 at 7:00pm.
Free Your Mind is a collection of personal narratives. Participants are invited to share a personal experience with implicit bias to release this story from their personal narrative.
Free Your Mind is a collection of personal narratives. Participants are invited to share a personal experience with implicit bias to release this story from their personal narrative.
I am giving a virtual lecture for the Mid Atlantic Fiber Association on March 28 at 7:00pm ET about Free Your Mind.
Free Your Mind is a collection of personal narratives. Participants are invited to share a personal experience with implicit bias to release this story from their personal narrative.
Free Your Mind is a public textile art project aiming to collect, exhibit, embed and release personal narratives about Microaggressions in a multi-sensory installation facilitated by artist Theda Sandiford.
Microaggressions are subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — everydayinteractions or behaviors that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages or assumptions toward historically marginalized groups. The weight of these daily interactions underpins very real consequences… stress, anger, frustration, self-doubt and ultimately feelings of powerlessness and invisibility.
This project intends to expose these interactions and provide a release for the participating individuals. Participants are invited to write a story about a microaggression they have experienced onto a ribbon and tie this ribbon onto a netto release this story from their personal narrative. This is a story ribbon.
The installation evolves with each new story ribbon, keeping a public record of disempowering interactions, that can be exposed and talked about. Participants have the feeling of being seen and acknowledged while interacting with the work. In the installation space, as visitors move throughout the space, motion sensors trigger monotone computer voice recordings of story ribbons.
In 2021 Free Your Mind toured, collecting story ribbons in Bayonne NJ, Jersey City NJ, Sunsets @ The Standard, Miami Art Week. In 2022 the installation will travel to ExpoChicago April 4-7 Navy Pier and will make stops in Brooklyn and Newark this year.
Free Your MindFree Your Mind – detail of Story Ribbons
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Interested individuals, institutions and businesses can support the project by engaging themselves and/or communities to collect story ribbons
SHARE YOUR STORY >>
Share a story about a microaggression you have experienced? How did it make you feel?
Microaggressions are subtle, everyday interactions or behaviors that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial messages or assumptions toward historically marginalized groups.
The weight of these daily interactions has very real consequences… stress, anger, frustration, self-doubt and ultimately feelings of powerlessness and invisibility.
LOCATION: Art150 at 150 Bay Street, Downtown Jersey City. Enter the building on the corner of 1st Street and Provost and ride the elevator up to the second floor.
ON VIEW: Now through January 8th 2022
Walk towards studio #231 and you will find the Free Your Mind installation.
Where you can write a statement about implicit bias or a microaggression you have experienced on a ribbon and then tie your ribbon onto the net to release this story from your personal narrative.
The New Jersey Arts Annual is a unique series of exhibitions highlighting the State’s visual and performing artists. It is open to any artist currently living or working in New Jersey. In partnership with major museums around the state, one exhibition takes place each year, alternating between host institutions.
The Arts Annual series is sponsored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment of the Arts.
This exhibition opens to the public at the Newark Museum of Art on June 17.
You Are So Articulate; 72 x 30 in, January 2021, Hollow braid polypropylene rope, paracord, ribbon, yarn, 3 ply cotton cord, braided nylon cord, nails on artist made loom.
