Digital Commons Network^™

Taking Care In The Digital Realm: Hmong Story Cloths And The Poverty Of Interpretation On Hmongemboridery.Org, Corey Hickner-Johnson

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines Hmong story cloths exhibited on the HmongEmbroidery.org virtual museum in order to consider 1.) transnational Hmong diasporic experience post-Vietnam, 2.) the problems with interpretation as a critical mode of scholarship seeking mastery, and 3.) the work of digital archives in accounting for displacement and loss. The Hmong, an indigenous group originally living in East Asia, created many of the story cloths exhibited on HmongEmbroidery.org in Thai refugee camps following the Vietnam War, during which they assisted the United States CIA against the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao. Displaced by enemy forces from their homes through violent means …

Fragmentality, Elena Volkova

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary art is dedicated to the conversation between the past and the present, the established and the experimental; it becomes more and more trans-border, as life itself. Nowadays, people live in the world, where their beliefs, ideas, politics, and religion are constantly colliding. The more people expand boundaries and develop connections, the more complex and tangled our society becomes as a system.

FRAGmentality presents a set of mixed media pieces incorporating painting, weaving, embroidery and three-dimensional elements dedicated to these contradictions in the modern society. It deals with structures within Social relations and human nature.

Being a representative of a …

Sabba Syal Elahi Interview (2 Of 2), Derek Hamilton

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Sabba Syal Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker and focuses her art practice in fibers and drawing/painting. She grew up in a traditional Pakistani household in the Midwest. Her art explores political violence, historical representation, memory, and it’s impact on the South Asian Diaspora and Muslim American communities. Recently, Sabba was a 2013-2014 Resident Artist in Chicago Artist Coalition’s Bolt Program and exhibited her work at Woman Made Gallery. For the past 6 years Sabba has provided college and career counseling and portfolio development with an emphasis on the visual arts for high school students at …

Sabba Syal Elahi Interview (1 Of 2), Simi Mathew

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Sabba Syal Elahi received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her art has been featured nationally at ArtWallah, internationally in Spain and Pakistan, and in the Chicagoland area. Sabba’s artwork is rooted in her bicultural experience and explores issues of cultural and historical representation, identity, and gender through personal, family, and community narratives. From 2011-2009 Sabba curated the visual art for an annual Chicago event called Voices of Resistance, which showcased the work of Chicago and Midwest based South Asian artists. Sabba has served four years as Coordinator of College and Career Programs …

The Reviving Project, Noor Sami

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

When Yushan Cassie Sun arrived in America in 2012, she already had big hopes for the future. A craft and material study major with a concentration in jewelry and metalsmithing, Cassie will graduate this May with some wonderful research experiences under her belt. e summer before she came to VCU, Cassie spent time learning the techniques of three crafts- men in China. As she lived and learned with them, she realized that although her learning was valuable, there were hundreds of other endangered craft techniques in China that she was not learning—and that’s what got her interested in what would …