Materials Lab Workshop: Stitching Pictures—Embroidery, Photography, and Practices of Adornment and Care

In this hands-on workshop inspired by the work of Joana Choumali, you’ll learn how to enhance, alter, and transform photographs through needlework.

This workshop is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces (January 25–May 11, 2025).

The session will begin with an exhibition tour by co-curators Ilisa Barbash, curator at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Harvard Art Museums curator Mitra Abbaspour, followed by a hands-on workshop led by Kathleen Quaintance, who is a craft scholar, teacher, and Ph.D. student in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Participants will learn how to use embroidery stitches to transform photographs. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own photographs or email them to [email protected]. In the workshop, we will print each image onto thick paper and use it as source material.

The hands-on session will take place in the Materials Lab on the Lower Level.

$15 workshop fee. Registration is required and space is limited; registration will open on this form, beginning on Wednesday, January 29, at 10am. Workshop fee must be paid to confirm registration. Minimum age of 14; no previous experience required.

Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces was co-organized by the Harvard Art Museums and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The creation of the works in this exhibition was funded by the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum. For more information, visit the Gardner Fellowship website.

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