Over the next few weeks, Western New Mexico University Cultural Affairs will host a series of artist workshops centered around storytelling and a set of concerts called Women in Music and featuring global voices.
Themed Journey of the Storyteller: Notion of Place, the workshops will be led by New Mexico artists, who draw connections between the intellectual, imaginative and cultural elements involved in creating art. The initial artist lectures will be open to the public. Artist and writer Edie Tsong kicks off the series with “Love Letters to the World” on Thursday, January 28, while multimedia artist Alia Ali continues it with “An Indexical Archive” beginning on Thursday, February 25.
“In collaboration with WNMU Expressive Arts instructor Jennifer Douglas, WNMU Cultural Affairs is reaching out to regional artists in recognition of how the arts can inspire a new discussion, which synthesize imagery, dialogue and our critical thought processes. This collaboration involves many departments across campus,” WNMU Cultural Affairs Program Coordinator Alexandra Tager said.
Tying into the university’s Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences mission, more than five academic departments are integrating concepts from these workshops into their course curricula and encouraging their students to participate in the series (application here), during which they’ll collaborate to develop a public works piece that gives voice to individual interpretation of story and place.
“As artists, we wish for our narratives to engage and connect with our audience, which is why storytelling lies at the very core of why we produce art. The telling of tales, the suggesting of narratives, and the unravelling of mysteries, are fundamental to what unites us and helps start fresh and exciting new conversations,” Douglass said.
In Thursday’s Zoom session, Tsong will discuss handmade objects and their potential to connect people and places, also examining social practice in relation to art and culture. In the following student-only session, she will lead writing exercises and assist students in crafting letters about incidents that caused shifts in their lives. The handwritten letters will be enlarged and installed in and on buildings around Silver City, read on local radio, and published by local media.
In the series of workshops led by Ali, participants will choose objects as their muses and learn how to archive their stories through photography and sound. The resulting exhibit, which will be made available virtually at wnmu.edu, will open on Thursday, March 4.
“Visitors are encouraged to depend on the sound of the recording and embrace the notion of oral history-making and storytelling, while being critical of those who create our narratives and archives,” Douglass said.
Seeing an increased accessibility to artists, WNMU Cultural Affairs conceived the Women in Music Series, which provides original content virtually but with the intimacy of traditional house concerts in mind. “Zoom allows us to be inside an artist’s living room or studio, and we wanted to take advantage of that access,” Tager said.
The series brings global female voices to the fore, as each Women in Music event will showcase two musicians from different cultures, sharing music, discussing their paths to success, riffing off one another, telling stories and taking questions from the audience.
The first in the series features Jordanian singer Farah Siraj and Kiran Ahluwalia, who is originally from India. Two-time JUNO Award winner Ahluwalia is known for open-hearted vocals, while Siraj approaches music as a medium for peace and compassion, singing in English, Arabic and Spanish.
They have collaborated on an original composition which will have its worldwide debut during the WNMU Cultural Affairs Women in Music series opener on Thursday, February 11.
Register to receive Zoom links for the WNMU Cultural Affairs spring 2021 season events at wnmu.edu/culture.