11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Friendship Bracelet Workshop with Nnaemeka Ekwelum
Chicago Rooms, 2nd Floor North

Do you remember making lanyards and friendship bracelets as a child? Please join Chicago-based textile artist Nnaemeka Ekwelum for a relaxed, intergenerational lanyard-making workshop inspired by his practice of using plastic lacing (rexlace) to create textiles and garments. This workshop invites participants to revisit childhood nostalgia while learning how to make lanyards using colorful plastic lacing. From 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., we’ll gather around tables to create, share stories, and learn from one another, much like the tradition of quilting and weaving circles through which people come together to work side by side. Open to all participants (ages 7 and up), this workshop welcomes beginners and experienced makers alike. Come make something with your hands, connect with others, and rediscover the joy of creating together.

Nnaemeka (Emeka) Ekwelum is a Chicago-based fiber and installation artist from Boston, MA. His creative and scholarly work as a multidisciplinary and transnational researcher and cultural worker is informed by his upbringing as an American-born child of Nigerian immigrants. From that perspective, he produces cultural artifacts that aspire to amplify Black diasporic materials and symbols, cultural memory, collaborative friendship, and the ongoing significance of global Black cultural production.

In addition to his creative arts practice, Ekwelum is also an independent curator and global arts researcher/educator with a PhD in Black Studies from Northwestern University. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the South Side Community Arts Center (Chicago, IL), Zhou B Art Center (Chicago, IL), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), Center of Knowhere Art Gallery (Oak Bluffs, MA), and the 2025 reimagining of The People’s Flag Show at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

Photo Credit: Lishan AZ

Between the folds of this world, lingering pieces of one’s own gossamer, narrative threads lay waiting to be unearthed and held.

To Be Remembered: Woven Matters of the Heart embraces the reflective ways in which five contemporary textile artists illuminate their rich interior worlds through their unique fiber practices. The artists: ebere agwuncha, Nnaemeka Ekwelum, Hale Ekinci, Josué Esaú, and Thương Hoài Trần each visually intertwine time, memory, and emotion to conjure deeply felt histories across spatial geographies, venerating the cultural traces that connect us to the motherlands.

Embedded in their designs and motifs, the artworks’ layered meanings preserve cultural continuity through extensive research that awakens their ancestors’ legacies and gifts. The works create new pathways to becoming closer to one another, communicating how we become and become undone within the ever-changing cycles of life. Skillfully made by hand, the artists guide us in how we learn to weave our own personal mythologies.

The magic in life is apparent, and we invite you to find it within.

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Tags: Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, Friendship Bracelet Workshop, Loop, Nnaemeka Ekwelum