Sabbatical: Threads of Assumption: Community Stories of Gender Bias, East Hartford Grant Spring 2023

During my sabbatical, I co-led Threads of Assumption, an interdisciplinary workshop series and art exhibition at the East Hartford Public Library, alongside collaborators Maria Finkelmeier, Martha Rettig, Sofie Hodara, and U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo. Supported by a grant from the Town of East Hartford, our team worked with community members to explore gender bias through collaborative art-making and storytelling.

Together, we designed workshops held in November 2022 and February 2023, where participants reflected on personal experiences of gender bias, shared stories, and expressed these narratives through individual weavings. Using color-coded yarn to symbolize different aspects of their stories, participants wove their reflections into tangible, visual representations. Our role as facilitators was to create a meditative, supportive space for this creative process, where participants could freely explore sensitive topics and transform their experiences into art.

These community-created weavings became part of a larger installation for the Threads of Assumption exhibition, which opened in April 2023. In the exhibition, we combined these handmade weavings with AI-analyzed interpretations of gender bias, inviting visitors to engage with both physical and digital representations of these stories. The interactive nature of the exhibit allowed attendees to contribute further by weaving on a large-scale loom and adding their data into a live digital visualization.

Through this project, we sought to highlight how art and technology can be used to address complex social issues such as gender bias. By integrating community stories with AI, we not only confronted the limitations of current technological tools but also demonstrated how collaborative making can make abstract concepts tangible and accessible. This sabbatical experience underscored the power of collective action, allowing us to co-create a space for reflection, dialogue, and ongoing artistic and social inquiry.