TSA’s Spring 2026 Colloquium

Textiles: Holding Evidence, Giving Voice, is an exploration of the intrinsic connection between the perishable nature of textiles, memory and the pursuit of stories that have not been told. These ideas will be framed within examples of protest and memorialization in cloth, embroidery, quilting and other forms of making. From textile archeology to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, this talk will question the foundation of recorded narratives, whose stories have been excluded and the soft power of fiber materials and practices.

Maea will trace the evolving relationship to the palms in Southern California and these invasive plants’ complex history to the Los Angeles landscape. She will discuss her personal histories as a maker and how her focus on weaving and gardens illuminated within her art practice a forgotten dynamic between human and land. She will speak about weaving as an early human technology, diaspora and capitalisms repatterning of the body and the importance of our radical reimagining of these ancestral practices in LA communities now.

Date: April 16, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
Location: Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA & Online
Registration Deadline April 15, 2026

In-Person
Member: $52.00
Non-Member: $75.00
Student: $35.00

Virtual
Member: $30.00
Non-Member: $52.00

Institutional group pricing upon request. Please contact us at hello@textilesocietyofameria.org.

Your registration helps sustain TSA’s mission to foster the exchange and dissemination of knowledge and experiences about textiles worldwide. Individuals seeking assistance related to accessibility needs are encouraged to contact access@textilesocietyofamerica.org.

Keynote Speaker Fafnir Adamites
Fafnir holds an MFA degree from the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Photography and Women’s Studies from UMass Amherst. Fafnir is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Fiber Area at California State University, Long Beach and has taught workshops and intensives at Arrowmont School of Art and Craft, Snow Farm: The New England Craft Program and Women’s Studio Workshop. Their work has been shown nationally, including a recent juried group exhibition of fiber art from Southern California, “Split Ends” at the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion in Costa Mesa, CA. Fafnir has received several grants to support their exhibitions and studio practice and has been awarded residencies at the Icelandic Textile Center, MASS MoCA, Women’s Studio Workshop and Vermont Studio Center. Fafnir presents artistic talks frequently and recently spoke at Thinking Through Textiles: Future Pedagogies at UCLA and Textile Society of America’s 2024 Symposium Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles. Their research focuses on the intersection of textile archeology, queer making, monuments and feminist theory. They are a Board Member and Co-Chair of the Surface Design Association, a member of The Textile Society of America and North American Hand Papermakers.
fafniradamites.com
@fafniradamites

Plenary Presentation by Maria Maea
Maria utilizes assemblage and process-based figurative sculptures and installations to illuminate the relationship between land and the body, specifically focused on narratives around immigrant families and their labor in Los Angeles. Her research focuses on equitable futures and climate justice through food and water accessibility in marginalized communities.

Through her use of materials such as concrete, rebar, found objects, fruiting plants, seeds, and woven palm fronds foraged across Los Angeles, Maea creates future ancestor sculptures that act as intimate portraits of family and community as well as abstract cartography of the LA urban landscape. Many of her works structurally contain seed pods that over time will crumble to dust, leaving only the viable seed behind. Through the act of propagation and stewardship the artworks become multi-generational. These works seek to expand and complicate our relationship to issues around justice, stewardship, contamination and preservation.

Maea’s most recently awarded: Latinx Artist Fellowship (National Award, 2024-2025) and California Community Fund Fellowship (Los Angeles, 2024-2025). Exhibited at: the air we share, Craft Contemporary (LA, 2025), Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism, West Den Haag/ the Brick (Netherlands 2025, LA 2024), At the Edge of the Sun, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (LA, 2024), Made In LA: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum – biennial exhibition(LA, 2023), Stargazer, Public Sculpture at Los Angeles State Historic Park and LA Nomadic Division (LA, 2023) Acquisitions: All In Time, Hammer Museum – 2024 Mohn Collections.
mariamaea.com
@maeamaria

Panelist Yasmin Mora
Yasmin Mora is a Chicana textile artist who creates large-scale tufted works that feel like emotional landscapes. Through her studio, Umaguma, she merges naturally dyed Oaxacan wool with contemporary tufting processes, expanding traditional Mexican materials into sculptural, emotionally driven forms. Her work explores dual identity, memory, and what it means to carry tradition while reshaping it. Moving through the interplay between softness and structure, past and present, tufting becomes a ritual, a way of working through inherited stories and transforming them into something tactile and alive.
umagumastudio.co
@umaguma___

Panelist Maru García
Maru is a Mexican, LA-based artist/chemist working across art + science + environment. Operating at the intersection of art, science, and the environment, Maru bridges the gap between empirical research and creative expression. As both an artist and a chemist, her practice is rooted in regenerative art, moving beyond observation to actively engage in restoring the natural world. Her work centers on “seeing the unseen,” or the art of the imperceptible, where she translates complex chemical and biological processes into tangible experiences. By focusing on microbes, plants, and minerals, she studies the interactions between the organic and inorganic to reveal the hidden pulse of our ecosystems. Her multidisciplinary approach spans the laboratory, the gallery, and public spaces. She creates objects and experiences that challenge our perception of permanence and address urgent issues such as soil contamination through installation, sculpture, mosaics, video, microscopy, and biomaterial experimentation.

Her ventures into public art include a large-scale digital piece for the California Natural Resources Agency and a proposal for a sculpture at the Puente Hills Landfill Park, commissioned by the Los Angeles Arts and Culture Department. She was an artist in residence at the National Center of Genetic Resources in Mexico and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts ‘Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant, the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Environmental Justice Grant, and the Getty Foundation Grant. She was part of the Getty Research Institute’s 2019-2020 Scholar program, “Art and Ecology,” and a 2021-2022 artist in residence at the 18th Street Arts Center. She has collaborated with Metabolic Studio since 2023 and is an Associate Research Scientist in Mineral Sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Maru García is the founder of Prospering Backyards. She holds an MFA in Design & Media Arts from UCLA, an MS in Biotechnology, and a BS in Chemistry, both from Tecnológico de Monterrey, México.
marugarciastudio.com
@marugfe

Panelist Katrina Bruins
Katrina’s work in the arts is a testament to her core belief: that arts organizations are at their best when they work together to achieve their collective missions. Katrina Bruins is an experienced nonprofit leader with a strong background in operations, program administration, and cross-border collaboration. As the Executive Director of Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego, she has played a key role in strengthening organizational systems and advancing community-centered initiatives. Previously, Katrina held a senior leadership role at an international border shelter, where she managed internal operations for a complex, fast-paced organization. Her work has included overseeing human resources, facilities, volunteer management, and organizational infrastructure while fostering partnerships across borders and sectors. Katrina is known for her ability to build and sustain meaningful community and institutional partnerships, align operational strategy with mission impact, and create collaborative environments that support staff, volunteers, artists, and stakeholders.
vmota.org
@visionsmuseum

Moderator Sobeidy Vidal
Sobeidy is a visionary woman born in the Dominican Republic with over 13 years of experience in strategist business, event production, branding, and marketing development. Founder and CEO of the successful Latin Fashion Week platform aimed to empower and promote the Latin apparel industry and professionals who seek to build their brands in a cross-promotion market. As well as expand their presence while finding multiple applications for their businesses in the USA. With year-round events in New York, Washington D.C., Texas, Dominican Republic, Canada, and Latin American countries. Founder of Luzs Foundation, a nonprofit organization seeking to enlighten and use the arts as a vehicle to create cultural awareness and empower women and young girls to pursue their careers in the fashion industry; along with reducing Human Trafficking by creating programs and activities through community prevention and education strategy program.
latinfashionweek.com
@latinfashionweek.com

This half-day convening continues TSA’s multi-year engagement with critical dialogue in textile studies, foregrounding the active, present-tense work of cultural memory. Building on “(re)Claiming Narratives” (2022) and “(re)Imagining Futures” (2023), the “(re)Membering” Colloquium poses the question: How are stories and identities actively reassembled through material practice in the present moment?

Featuring voices from across Southern California’s dynamic creative community, the colloquium examines how contemporary artists and researchers use textile practices to reconnect fragmented histories, reflect on inherited traditions, and imagine more equitable futures. By convening interdisciplinary perspectives from art, design, science, and cultural practice, “(re)Membering” highlights the ways textiles continue to shape conversations around land, labor, migration, and belonging.

If you are part of the arts, cultural, or academic community and interested in the role of textiles in shaping conversations around memory, identity, and material knowledge, this colloquium is for you.

We welcome textile artists and designers, scholars and researchers, museum and cultural professionals, students and educators, and members of the public who are curious about how contemporary creative practices and interdisciplinary research are expanding the field of textile studies.

Times shown are Pacific Time. Convert to your time zone.

8:30 – 8:55 a.m. | Check-in & Doors Open
In-Person at the Viva Event Center – Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), 628 Alamitos Ave, Long Beach, CA
Virtual Access via Zoom; the waiting room will be open.

8:55 – 9:00 a.m. | Welcome Remarks by Ashley Occhino, TSA Executive Director

9:00 – 9:50 a.m. | Keynote by Fafnir Adamites

10:00 – 10:50 a.m. | Plenary Presentation by Maria Maea

10:50 – 11:00 a.m. | Break & Networking

11:00 – 11:50 a.m. | Panel Discussion moderated by Sobeidy Vidal, featuring Yasmin Mora, Maru García, & Katrina Bruins

11:50 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Closing Remarks

12:00 – 6:00 p.m. | Gallery Access at MOLAA

In-person attendees will enjoy complimentary admission to MOLAA for the day.

This program is made possible in part from support from the Teitelbaum Family Fund and Latin American Fund.

Community partnerships make this work possible. Sponsorships are available to directly support critical components of the event, including livestreaming, captioning, speaker honoraria, and digital archiving, ensuring the broadest possible access and long-term impact. Contact the TSA to learn more about underwriting opportunities at hello@textilesocietyofamerica.org.