Name: (IN)VISIBILITY CLOAK EMBODYING WHITENESS, MEMORY, AND TRANSFORMATION THROUGH ARTS BASED EDUCATION RESEARCH
Start: 2026-10-07T15:00:00-0400
End: 2026-10-07T15:30:00-0400

(IN)VISIBILITY CLOAK EMBODYING WHITENESS, MEMORY, AND TRANSFORMATION THROUGH ARTS BASED EDUCATION RESEARCH

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

Circular Church

This project explores how arts-based educational research can be used to investigate whiteness, memory, and identity through embodied making. Centered on the transformation of an inherited wool cloak, the work engages personal and ancestral narratives as a way to question the social and emotional structures that shape what it means to be a “good” white woman. Drawing from family archives: photographs, lace, handwritten notes; the cloak becomes both material object and living archive, holding tensions between visibility and invisibility, performance and authenticity, harm and healing.
Through an improvisational and tactile process of stitching, transferring, layering, and revising, I worked in a way that prioritized intuition, slowness, and presence over efficiency or outcome. The exterior of the cloak reflects ideals of composure and beauty through formal portraits, while the interior reveals more intimate and complex realities—grief, play, resistance, and contradiction. This duality mirrors the inherited scripts of whiteness and the often-unspoken emotional histories that sustain them.
Rather than seeking resolution, this project embraces inquiry and disruption. It positions artmaking as a method for re-narrating the past, not to fix it, but to open space for new understandings. The work also extends into my role as an educator, highlighting the importance of embodied, relational, and co-created learning environments that challenge dominant norms of productivity and knowledge.
Ultimately, this project is an exploration of becoming; of sitting with discomfort, honoring complexity, and using creative practice to hold space for transformation.

Speakers

Amy Sparks

Assistant Extension Professor, University of Minnesota Extension Youth Development

Amy Sparks is a University of Extension Educator in Youth Development and a PhD student whose research explores arts-based, embodied, and liberatory approaches to education, with a focus on identity, belonging, and youth empowerment. She is dedicated to innovating and implementing... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
Circular Church

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IVLA 2026 Charleston

Amy Sparks

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Amy Sparks

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