Soft Structure: Sculpting Memory Through Fabric

This hands-on workshop led by Kemper Teaching Fellow Emma Xhaxho uses soft sculpture and found objects to process memory, emotion, and material transformation. Participants begin in the Museum’s galleries with a short, guided looking session, focusing on works that address material experimentation, fragmentation, and the body as a site.

The workshop centers on intuitive making through wrapping, stuffing, and assembling fabric-based materials and preliminary objects to construct small sculptural forms that function as “memory objects.” The goal is to treat material, and actions performed on the material, as a carrier of experience in which everyday textiles become a language for holding personal and collective associations.

About the Facilitator

Emma Xhaxho is an interdisciplinary, first-generation Albanian American artist born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Her artistic practice spans sculpture, fibers, printmaking, and installation. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Visual Art at the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis.