Upcoming ISM exhibition brings art and music from the world’s refugee camps to Yale
The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) will present Interwoven: Sounds and Visions from the World’s Refugee Camps from October 15 through December 3 at Miller Hall, a retrospective exhibition bringing together community art, traditional music, and cultural artifacts created by displaced communities across five continents.
Presented by Artolution, an international community-based public arts, education, and mental health organization, the exhibition explores how communities experiencing displacement and crisis use creative expression to preserve identity, share their stories, and build connections across borders.
The ISM will celebrate the exhibition with an opening reception in Miller Hall on Wednesday, October 14, beginning at 5 p.m., followed by an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.
Building on the acclaimed Interwoven: Exchange Artworks Made Between Refugee Camps Around the World, originally launched at the United Nations, this expanded presentation brings together large-scale collaborative artworks, video documentation of traditional folkloric musicians, and cultural artifacts created by displaced communities around the world.
At the heart of Interwoven is a dialogue between visual art and music. Alongside the artworks, visitors will encounter videos of musicians from the same communities, bringing another dimension to the stories represented in the exhibition. Through sound and image, visitors can experience the languages, rhythms, movements, artistic practices, and cultural traditions of the people who created the works.
Together, the artworks, music, and artifacts offer a powerful portrait of communities sustaining cultural traditions in the face of displacement. They also demonstrate the ways creative expression can foster resilience, preserve memory, and forge connections among people separated by geography and circumstance.
Artolution works with communities around the world to use collaborative artmaking as a means of strengthening connection, resilience, education, and mental health. Its projects center the creative voices of community members and encourage participants to tell their own stories through shared artistic experiences.
Interwoven: Sounds and Visions from the World’s Refugee Camps will be on view at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Miller Hall, 406 Prospect Street, New Haven. The exhibition will be open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from noon to 4 p.m. The ISM will be closed during Thanksgiving week.
The exhibition and opening reception are free and open to the public. View full details. Email Julia Alexander with any questions.
