RU Workshop: Politics and Poetics of Repair

Sunday August 2, 2026 | 2:00 – 4:00pm

Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions

Free Workshop

Limited to 15 participants. If you require any accessibility accommodations, please let us know at info@residencyunlimited.org when you RSVP and we will be happy to assist.

RSVP required.

In this workshop, led by Amalia Uribe Guardiola, participants will learn how to mend a textile piece while engaging in dialogue about the political and poetic weight of repair. What does it mean to attend to what is broken? What do we do when we recognize that life is made up of a constant fraying–unmaking–ripping of things? What are the socio economic threads embedded in the history of visible and invisible mending?

Participants will be asked to bring a textile piece in need of repair. Amalia will teach basic mending techniques (inspired by sashiko), but collaboration and imagination will be central to the exercise.

Together, participants will delve into the poetic and political metaphor of repair to ask: what do we do with what is broken?

This initiative is part of a series of 20 workshops designed to provide post residency support to RU’s local alumni artists. Curated by alum curator Hayley Ferber, the workshops are centered on the theme of creative engagement with the natural environment, inviting participants to explore processes of reuse, observation, material experimentation, and collective making.

Click below to see pictures from the event:

About

Amalia Uribe Guardiola is a feminist researcher and craft curator. Her work sits at the intersection of (im)migration studies, the handmade and oral history, with a particular focus on Latinx and Caribbean communities in New York. She is currently a PhD student in Performance Studies at New York University and holds an MA in Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement from the same institution. She has curated exhibits, public programs, and community-centered textile workshops with collectives such as BordeAndo, and arts organizations including Project For Empty Space, The Queens Museum and the Museum of the Magdalena River, in Honda, Colombia. She is also a research fellow at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center and a Craft Archive Fellow at the Center for Craft.

If you require any accessibility accommodations, please let us know at info@residencyunlimited.org when you RSVP and we will be happy to assist.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.