The Wearable Stories of Migrant Women

Wearable Stories explores migrant women’s experiences which emerge as a creative, visual, and visceral response to their backgrounds of marginalisation. Wearable stories tells of the tensions, joys, sorrows, pain, confusion, exhaustion and triumphs of being a resilient migrant woman in our contemporary society. Wearable stories will be told by Laura Nyahuye through five new pieces of work that represent her life as an African migrant woman and will speak to topics of women’s wellbeing, domestic abuse, mental health, women’s periods, motherhood, intergenerational conversations, marriage, culture, and ordinary day to day life as a marginalised migrant woman. The sharing of Laura’s ‘wearable stories’ is expected to open up conversations and solidarities with other migrant women who might have similar experiences and artistic practices.

Wearable Stories is hosted by the MARGINALITIES research group for arts and design at Northumbria University.

About Laura Nyahuye

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Laura is a mother, creative visionary, curator, designer/maker, writer, storyteller, performer, public speaker, consultant, changemaker and advocate. She works to create pathways for migrant communities. Her work is a visceral response to the social issues close to her heart. Her aim is to disrupt spaces, challenge policies and perceptions to do with race, migration, women, asylum seekers, refugees, young creatives from migrant, marginalised communities. This passion manifests via her creative process that embodies and cuts across multiple artforms. Her work sits in multiple spaces, including galleries, political think tanks, summits, evaluation processes, theatre, fashion, sport, community spaces, and commercial use. Heavily influenced by her African heritage, her creative practice fuses poetic self-expression, creative writing and centuries-old textile handicrafts to create striking sculptural body adornments and ready-to-wear pieces. She runs her studio from Coventry where she also leads Maokwo, a cultural organisation inspiring the next generation of creative visionaries - Home | Maokwo

About MARGINALITIES

MARGINALITIES is a research group for arts and design that aims to understand, explain, and address problems of racial inequity and injustice through evidence-based research, creative practices, decolonial methodologies, and activism. It seeks to celebrate Black joy as an act of resistance against the trauma and tragedy perpetuated in media and discourse by anti-Black racism and white supremacy. While it is based in arts and design, it is committed to fostering inter/trans/cross-disciplinary perspectives which best provide novel approaches to interrogate and solve the complex problems associated with intersectional inequities and injustices.

This event is free to attend but places should be booked in advance.

Image credit: Laura Nyahuye

Host or Publisher Northumbria University