Weaving community: Round table conversation

Weaving Community is a roundtable conversation exploring how textile and fiber art serves as a powerful medium for memory-making, healing, activism, and community building. The discussion will begin with participants introducing themselves and offering a brief overview of their artistic practices, with an emphasis on the community engagement strategies they’ve used to connect with diverse audiences.

Guided by a moderator, the conversation will unfold around a set of thoughtful questions designed to spark dialogue. Participants will be encouraged to share their insights and experiences, creating a dynamic and organic exchange of ideas around the transformative potential of fibers and textile arts.

Artists:

Nelly Agassi

Bryana Bibbs

Aram Han Sifuentes

Victoria Matrinez

Carina Yepez

Moderator:

Alivé Piliado

Nelly Agassi

Chicago-based artist Nelly Agassi (b.1973, Israel) is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with performance, installation, video, textile, sound and works on paper. Her work explores the relationship between the human body and architecture, through investigating sites and their histories, traumas and hopes. She weaves personal and collective stories to a universal fabric of new history.

She received her MFA from Chelsea College and her BFA from Central St. Martins, both in London. Her work has been shown internationally at institutions and galleries such as The Arts Club of Chicago, Aspect Ratio, Hyde Park Art Center, The Israel Museum, Poor Farm, Tate Modern, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, La Triennale di Milano, Zacheta Warsaw, Foksal Gallery Warsaw and upcoming show at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Agassi is a cofounder of the nonprofit organization Fieldwork Collaborative Projects and a 2019 Graham Foundation Fellow, Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw. She is represented by Dvir Gallery and Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw.

Bryanna Bibbs

Bryana Bibbs is a Chicago-based artist who works at the intersections of textiles, printmaking, painting, and community-based practices. Bibbs earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder of - a weaving workshop for victims and survivors of domestic violence, serves on the Surface Design Association’s Education Committee, and was named one of Breakout Artists of 2024.

Solo exhibitions include Power Trip, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL (2020); (un)disclosed, 1100 Florence Gallery, Evanston, IL (2022); Numb, Oliva Gallery, Chicago, IL (2023); Places (Edition 1) curated by Debra Kayes, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, IL (2023); Changes, Chesterton Art Center, Chesterton, IN (2024); Unforeseen, 21c Museum Hotel, Chicago, IL (2024); two hundred and fifty-one days, curated by Elise Butterfield, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL (2025).

Aram Han Sifuentes

Aram Han Sifuentes (she/they) is a social practice and fiber artist, writer, and educator who works to center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. She aims to confront social and racial injustices against the disenfranchised and riffs off official institutions and bureaucratic processes to reimagine new, inclusive, and humanized systems of civic engagement and belonging. She does this by creating participatory and active environments where safety, play, and skill-sharing are emphasized. And even though many of her projects are collaborative and communal in nature, they incite and highlight individual’s experiences, politics, and voice.Han Sifuentes earned her B.A. in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been a recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Map Fund, Asian Cultural Council’s Individual Fellowship, Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, AHL Foundation’s Andrew & Barbara Choi Family Foundation Grant, Illinois Art Council Agency’s Artist Fellowship Award, Center of Craft’s Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship, Designing a Better Chicago Impact Grant, and 3Arts Award. In 2021, she was awarded a 3Arts Next Level/Spare Room Award, a $50,000 unrestricted grant to three women in the visual arts in Chicago who were previous 3Arts Award recipients. In 2022, she was awarded a Joyce Award, a $75,000 award to support the creation of her new work in collaboration with HANA Center called Citizenship for All: Storytelling Through Nonggi Making. Her project Protest Banner Lending Library was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum in London in 2016.

Victoria Martinez

Victoria Martinez (b. Chicago, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist who has a reverence for textiles, public art, and architecture. She produces fiber-based projects including painting and installation art, which is inspired by ancient sites, materiality research, and the urban environment.

Martinez has exhibited at the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Art, Northwestern University, the Perrotin Gallery viewing salon, and at Transmitter Gallery in Brooklyn. Her work has been supported by The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Research Fellowship and The MacMillian Center Field Research Fellowship through Yale University, the Career Development Grant through the American Association of University Women, and a travel grant through the Rebuild Foundation.

Martinez holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Upcoming projects include solo exhibitions at Produce Model Gallery, Co-Prosperity Catskill, the Chicago Cultural Center.

Carina Yepez

A Chicago, Illinois, native with family roots in Guanajuato, Mexico. She is an educator and artist. She is passionate about exploring the traditions of matriarchy and the interconnected stories of Chicago immigrants through quilting. By using sewing as her medium, she delves into the techniques of domesticity and expresses her family's stories with a focus on healing ancestral trauma. Her work sparks conversations about the intersection of craft and fine art through sewing and appliqué layering, honoring her culture through floral motifs in her quilts and photographic weavings.

Yepez has presented in group exhibitions at Circle Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2024) the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL (2024); Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL (2024); Dom Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria (2024); National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL (2023); Chicago Art Department, Chicago, IL (2023); Beverly Shore Museum and Depot, Beverly Shore, IN (2023); Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL (2023); Gallery 19 & Pilsen Arts & Community House; Chicago, IL (2021); National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL (2021); Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago, IL (2021); Arts of Life’s Circle Contemporary; Chicago, IL, (2021); Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum; La Conner, WA (2021).

Weaving Community is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.

This program is funded by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

PHOTO BY RYAN BACH

Also check out other Arts events in Chicago, Fine Arts events in Chicago, Exhibitions in Chicago.