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Savneet Talwar is an art therapist, fiber artist and educator. Her artistic practice explores needle methodologies to engage in stitching and mending as an act of slow activism. In her Social Fabric(s) class her students explore textiles as a type of material that can be used to foster and strengthen community, create social bonds and raise awareness about social and political issues to advocate for social change. As an interdisciplinary fiber and feminist artist, her work exists at the intersection of archives, memory, language, feminist politics and questions of resistance. She is interested in the contradictions of feminist and archival matters – what and who is worthy of being a subject of discourse? What colonial narratives and images continue to define matters of the global south?
Her passion for fiber arts has led to various community based projects such as the Wandering Uterus Project that uses the fiber arts to create dialogue about reproductive justice. She was the founder of CEW (Creatively Empowered Women) Design Studio that served Bosnian and South Asian immigrant women. The studio provided sewing, knitting, crocheting and art sessions to increase life skills and cultivate a shared sense of belonging. Her most recent project is the Mending Lab that explores mending and repair as a powerful metaphor for storytelling, activism, grief, remembering and healing. She is also a member of the P O Box Collective, a social practice space in Rogers Park, Chicago. She is the author of Art Therapy for Social Justice: Radical Intersections and has published numerous articles in national and international journals on ethics of care, intersectional feminism, feminist pedagogy, the politics of crafting, culture and identity, ethics, law and cultural competence and trauma informed art therapy.
BIEN Workshop: Mending for Radical Hope
A gesture of hope is a powerful metaphor during uncertain times. Increasingly, artists, educators and cultural workers are focusing on mending and repair - both literal and metaphorical - as a powerful tool for storytelling, activism, grief, remembering and healing. In this workshop, participants will reflect on the challenges we face as world citizens in responding to geopolitical conflict and collective grief. Using the power of the needle, participants will articulate an ethics of community care in a world where carelessness reigns. Through collective mending and storytelling we will strategize how to create collaborative ecosystems of care and radical hope.
