Altars Archives

Part of the 2024-25 ReMemory: Experiments in Listening, Authorship and Knowledge-Keeping Series:

Altars Archives: Strategies for Decolonizing Participatory Art, Design and Witnessing [Virtual Event]

Drawing on my experience as a victim/survivor, activist for memory, artist, designer, and researcher, I will share the process of creating . This memory initiative was made in collaboration with the Association Mothers of April (AMA), a collective of families of victims of state violence organized in a context of authoritarian and brutal repression in Nicaragua. This endeavor was informed by the families' use of altars as technologies of remembrance and connection to the spiritual realm to share our individual pain with a broader community. Through this example, I will share strategies for decolonizing participatory art, design, and witnessing through embodied practices.

Emilia Yang (She/her/hers/ella) is an artist, designer, organizer, researcher, and director of "AMA y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity" from Nicaragua. Her art practice utilizes expanded forms of expanded media for the creation of community-based feminist, anti-racist, and transformative justice projects and futures. 

Her artworks have been exhibited in international spaces such as the Resistance Biennial in Guatemala, the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica, the Museum of Jade and Pre-Columbian Culture in Costa Rica, Casa América and the Museum and Vanguard Art Center Neomudéjar in Spain, Le Commun Contemporary Art Building in Geneva, and the Games and the New Media Summit at Tribeca Film Festival. 

She has been the recipient of multiple fellowships, including the Arts for Gender Equality Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation and CARE USA in 2023 and the Hunting Family Faculty Fellow at U-M Institute of the Humanities in 2024. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design with a focus on Anti-Racism by Design. www.emiliayang.org

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