There’s a new exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts called 25 Million Stitches: One Stitch, One Refugee. It’s a global participatory art project that uses thousands of hand-stitched panels to represent refugees worldwide. It’s meant to bring awareness to the enormity of the crisis.
KNAU’s Bree Burkitt got a tour of the installation from CCA Exhibitions Director Julie Comnick.
So, we’re here at the Coconino Center for the Arts in the middle of this very large exhibition. It’s hard to picture something like this just from words alone, but please try to summarize what exactly we’re looking at?
Sure the project was conceived by an artist in Sacramento, California — Jennifer Kim Sohn who had the idea of an exhibition where every mark in the exhibition would represent one refugee on the globe — so one person displaced from their homeland and what better way to make a mark than a handmade stitch…essentially, she reached out to artists and non-artists — ages five to 91 are represented. And these stitchers produce designs and patterns and imagery pertaining to their own interpretations of the refugee crisis. All 50 states, 36 countries are represented, 2,006 total stitchers. There's the 25 million stitches. 25 million was the number of estimated refugees on the planet in 2019 when she started the project. Currently, the number is closer to 27 million, of course, continues to fluctuate.
Could you talk about some of the designs and what stories they tell about the refugee experience?
There are some that are just stitch lines in different colors, sort of methodical, repetitive patterns, and others are these extremely intricate images — everything from, you know, images of the Statue of Liberty, other images are... there's one I really appreciate that is life jackets floating.. Um... referring to, you know, refugees that cross water — the Greek refugee crisis, in particular. Others are words and phrases. Some are very personal, personal accounts, personal stories, other more universal interpretations of the theme.
What criteria or instructions were participants given for the project?
…they were given the criteria of the dimensions of the muslin fabric and Jennifer would ship out, send out the pieces if they didn't have access to, you know, their own materials. And then I believe it was, you know, again, like patterns or images, amassing as many stitches as they could in an image to connect back with the project… So to count the stitches, they had, you know, these little like, you know, viewfinder windows that they would put over an area and whether it was, you know, spread out stitches or concentrated stitches, they had an estimated number of how those how that density of stitches would fill up this, you know, one-inch square viewfinder or something and then they sort of documented each panel and how many estimated stitches are on each panel as they came in... Up 'til 25 million.
How's the response been so far?
Oh, it's been tremendous…People are often moved to tears. It's one I recommend people come once and come again, you know, to just sort of absorb the enormity and all the individual images…we had Master Chorale of Flagstaff perform opening weekend with a repertoire of songs of refugee stories in different languages. It was very emotional. It was beautiful. And then we have ongoing series of panel discussions. Speaker Series, humanities experts that can bring in different perspectives on the refugee crisis from different viewpoints. So we'll have those continuing throughout the exhibition.
Julie Comnick, thanks so much for walking me through the exhibition.
Yeah, thank you.
The 25 Million Stiches: One Stitch, One Refugee exhibit runs through January 21. Visit the Coconino County Center for the Arts website for more information.
