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Emotional Baggage Carts
We all carry emotional baggage. This manifests differently for each of us. Some push shopping carts of pain and bitterness while some of us carry a wee tote bag. How we choose to handle our baggage makes a difference. We have a choice to let it define us or to let it go and move forward as a form of active resistance.
My Emotional Baggage Carts are vessels for racial trauma. Each baggage cart serves… to separate myself from the daily experience of microaggressions and create a new possibility for myself, free from the constraints of implicit bias.
Free Your Mind
Free Your Mind is a collection of personal narratives. Participants are invited to share a personal experience with implicit bias to release this story from their personal narrative.
Later, Artist Theda Sandiford will weave the ribbons into the net, infusing the stories into the social fabric of a protective blanket.
Theda Sandiford Bio
Theda Sandiford is an award-winning self-taught fiber and installation artist based in Jersey City, NJ.
Using racial trauma as a starting point, Theda juxtaposes various fibers with a variety of found materials using free form weaving, coiling, knotting, crochet, and jewelry making techniques. Meticulously collected materials and community donations, transformed by their collective memory become “social fabric,” weaving together contemporary issues and personal narratives.
Community is key to her social practice. Theda curates’ multi-disciplinary experiences pairing people, sound and art making to create a safe space to explore themes such as equity & inclusion, sustainability, and personal wellbeing.
Theda has shown extensively nationwide; including Untitled Art Fair, SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW, Governor’s Island, New Jersey Arts Annual and American Contemporary Craft: National Juried Exhibition. Theda received Excellence in Fibers VI from Fiber Art Now, the 2020 Jersey City Arts, Visual Artist Award and the 2021 Fellowship in Craft from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
