25 Million Stitches: One Stitch, One Refugee

Traveling Exhibit Revealing the Connections between Textiles, Printmaking Opens at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles on Thursday, October 3rd through Sunday, December 29th. 

Thursdays, Fridays | 1 pm to 7 pm
 Saturdays, Sundays | 11 am to 5 pm

25 Million Stitches was initiated and conceived in May 2019 by Jennifer Kim Sohn, a multimedia artist and activist to visually document the enormity of the number of refugees in the world and to sustain the concern for the refugees in the minds of global citizens.

This project provides a beautifully resonant expression of art activism that raises awareness of the immense number of peoples forcibly displaced from their homelands by violence and natural disasters. By choosing basic stitching as the means to tally the number of people displaced, those who are new to art-activism were drawn to it and became part of our collective mending, of repair. Every participant from 5 to 91 years of age, from the asylum seeker to the artist who had never thought of their art as an expression of social activism, became an essential part of project.

The full installation of these panels gives the viewer a way of processing the enormity of 25 million – the approximate number of refugees estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees when this project started. But the panels also have an important narrative quality, both individually and in their collective presentation. Many panels convey images, symbols, and messages of solidarity, hope and community. The culmination of this community effort is a grand collection of diverse tapestries comprised of each participant’s unique expression of solidarity with the world’s refugees. We believe that the installation of this collection will raise awareness of the global refugee crisis and help people comprehend the enormity of it in a way that words alone cannot.