Chicago-based artist Aram Han Sifuentes works across fiber, social practice, and collaborative, community-based projects to explore themes of labor, migration, and belonging. Her projects center collective making, often through sewing, as a way to build community and create space for participation, especially for those whose voices are often excluded or who may be at risk. In this artist lecture, Sifuentes will share images and discuss her practice, with a focus on her Protest Banner Lending Library. This ongoing project brings people together to create handmade banners that can be used in demonstrations and other forms of public protest, making space for different forms of participation and expression. The Protest Banner Lending Library offers a pathway.

Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber and social practice artist, writer, and educator who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. 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 Joyce Award, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Map Fund, Asian Cultural Council’s Individual Fellowship, 3Arts Award, and 3Arts Next Level Award. Her project Protest Banner Lending Library was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum in London in 2016.