August Events with our Artists in Residence at the Learning Hub
In Person & Online
Throughout the month of August
FREE
Join us for a month of free programs with our Summer/Fall Artists in Residence, Omo Iserhienrhien and Azadeh Monzavi! Omo and Azadeh will be working in the Learning Hub in the coming months, and visitors can participate in their creative process though hands-on activities, talks, demos, and workshops. The full line-up of events are listed below with links to register.
Textile Teach-In: Smocking and 3D Textile Techniques Workshop with Omo Iserhienrhien
Thursday August 24, 5-6:30 pm
In-Person
Omo’s experience in interior design and creating spaces lends itself well to this workshop that explores ways of manipulating textiles to produce three-dimensional forms. Learn smocking and other techniques to build up shape and texture in your textile work.
Register for the In-Person Program
FINISHED: Artist Talk: Altered Spaces, an Introduction to Design and Textile Practice with Omo Iserhienrhien and Azadeh Monzavi
Thursday August 10, 5 to 6:30 pm
Hybrid
Get to know two of our Artists in Residence, Omo Iserhienrhien and Azadeh Monzavi as they share their past work, textile practices, and what found materials from our Reuse Program are inspiring their work!
Register for the In-Person Program
Register for the Online Program
FINISHED: Textile Teach-In: Gélédé Queens and Material Reuse – A Quilting Workshop with Omo Iserhienrhien & Destinie Adélakun
Thursday August 17, 5-6:30 pm
In-Person
The Gélédé ( (Geh-Leh-Deh) is a festival celebrated by the Yoruba-Nago community from Benin, Nigeria and Togo in West Africa. It takes place every year after the harvests and is performed to pay tribute to the primordial mother Iyà Nlà and the power of women. It is characterized by carved masks, dances and chants, sung in the Yoruba language and traces the history and myths of the Yoruba-Nago people.
In this workshop, Omo and Destinie discuss material reuse in reference to Gélédé Queens, an exhibition by Destinie, on view at Market Gallery until October 28. Inspired by the West African festival which is a masked performance in veneration of the society’s ancestral mothers, Gélédé Queens is a multi-media experience that emphasizes gender-bending, “African Drag” and Vogue as an artistic expression.
Destinie Adélakun is a self-taught artist born in Lagos, Nigeria, raised in Nagpur, India, currently living and working between Toronto and New York City.Her work explores the themes of pre-colonized African/Indian history, mythology, religions, and spirituality in the forms of photography, film, paintings, and sculptures. She utilizes individuals in her work personifications of principles and re-illustrated African and Indian mythological tales. She celebrates women of the African and Indian diaspora and plays with adornment that embodies the creative direction of the work.
Register for the In-Person Program
Omo is a Nigerian/Guyanese/ Canadian Artist and Space Designer with a wide range of creative and technical experience in creating beautiful and meaningful spaces. Omo has a deep need to connect with her African and Caribbean history and community through her work and often dreams up projects for storytelling through textiles.
Over the past few years she has been designing textiles and objects that are acts of ritual but also tell a deeper meaning of her Nigerian culture and ancestral past. The African Diaspora, specifically West African has a rich history of craft which when highlighted creates a dialog between our past and future. Omo sees many links between how Nigeria in specific has had to reinvent itself over and over again in order to preserve its art. As well as how her own identity as a first generation Canadian can design for cultural permanence. Omo often depicts altar spaces with her large scale installations as a means of making sense of place and our own identities.
Azadeh’s work explores concepts of social justice, home, belonging, and identity within global contexts. Through her research-creation, she interrogates the decolonizing potential of textile practices as a form of communicative media within broader and interrelated frameworks of intersectional feminist activism and visual culture.
Material aspects of her process include upcycling used fabrics and clothing acquired from second-hand and thrift shops, and the Reuse Program at the Textile Museum of Canada. She also has explored ‘found’ objects through social encounters with users/designers of textiles/clothing. These materials enrich her work by interweaving narratives implied and/or hidden within previously used textile traces and remnants with themes drawn from her own personal and political consciousness and reflective research practices.
For any accessibility needs, please email Leah Sanchez: events@textilemuseum.ca
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