Over 600 Contributors Across the Nation Join Together to Honor our Shared Immigrant Heritage
For Immediate Release
February 27, 2019
Media Contact:
Veda Banerjee, 415-561-3082
vbanerjee@parksconservancy.org
Sharing Yarns: Knitted Sculptures of Immigration Stories at Fort Point National Historic Site Celebrate Our Common Thread
Over 600 Contributors Across the Nation Join Together to Honor our Shared Immigrant Heritage
San Francisco, CA: The Immigrant Yarn Project—at Fort Point National Historic Site (NHS) and free and open to the public—is organized by Enactivist. This massive work of public and crowd-sourced, yarn-based art honors our shared immigrant story and promotes tolerance, difference, and community. Featuring contributions schools, homeless shelters, retirement centers, and hundreds of individuals representing every community from California to Maine, we have collected these works of yarn art, each representing a personal or familial story.
These pieces are compiled, sewn together and fashioned into sculptural totems measuring 12 inches in diameter by four, five or six feet tall. these abstracted human shapes stand as a bold and beautiful metaphor for the magnificent diversity of our country and its immigrant story. Each submission, both big and small, carries a personal immigration story, made into visual art by juxtaposing them with the colors and patterns, designs, words, or symbols of the pieces around it. The project embodies and celebrates both our shared immigrant story and our citizenry in a nation composed of diverse backgrounds, families, politics, faiths, identities, and ideas.
“Every once in a while we come face to face with a situation that shoves us into a sudden and palpable awareness of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the inescapable network of mutuality—that whatever affects one of us directly, affects all of us indirectly. Understanding this interconnectedness, even across the greatest gulfs of difference is the genesis of the Immigrant Yarn Project — an attempt at holding a mirror up to humanity and seeing reflected both communion and difference,” Cindy Weil, Lead Artist and Exhibition Curator, Immigrant Yarn Project and Founder and Creative Director, Enactivist
In partnership with the National Park Service at Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy through the Art in the Parks program, Immigrant Yarn Project features knitted and crocheted pieces of yarn made by over 600 contributors from across the country representing generations of immigrants from every corner of the world—and includes contributions from homeless communities, seniors, students, LGBTQ, Native Americans, and even a Former Secretary of State.
“Immigrant Yarn Project will be fittingly installed at Fort Point National Historic Site,” said Michelle Gee, Chief of Interpretation and Education at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “The narrative of the people that built, worked, and lived at Fort Point plays an important role when recognizing the Bay Area’s immigration story. Bringing this project to national park land, sites that belong to all of us, help us more deeply understand the exhibition’s important themes of community and our shared experiences.”
A part of International Coalition of Sites of Conscience—along with Angel Island State Park and Statue of Liberty National Monument—Fort Point invites us to reflect on these stories of immigration and how they have and continue to shape the Bay Area and beyond.
Location: Fort Point National Historic Site
Duration: March 8, 2019, until May 15, 2019
Hours and dates: 10 am to 5 pm, Fridays-Sundays
This exhibit is free and open to the public
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