Reconstructing Histories through Craft and Community with Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Jeffrey Yoo Warren, is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and crafter whose work explores themes of cultural heritage, identity, and community. Jeffrey shares his unique journey from studying architecture to finding his calling in artistic practices deeply rooted in historical research and traditional craftsmanship.

Through his residency at the Library of Congress, Jeffrey talks about the reconstruction of early Asian American communities and neighbourhoods, creating immersive virtual and physical models that invite viewers to experience and connect with these often-overlooked histories.

He also shares his passion for woodworking, papermaking, and learning traditional Korean crafts, allowing him to forge a tangible link with his ancestral roots and cultural inheritance.

Highlights:

• Embracing the personal and specific aspects of one's identity and cultural background can lead to a deeper, more meaningful artistic practice, challenging the concept of universality as a design goal.
• Finding joy and fulfilment in the creative process is essential, and recognizing when work no longer aligns with one's passions is a valuable lesson.
• Collaboration and building community connections, especially within diasporic or underrepresented groups, can foster a profound sense of belonging and inspire new ideas.
• Trusting one's instincts and exploring seemingly tangential interests can uncover unexpected paths to self-discovery and artistic expression.
• Preserving and reviving traditional crafts and practices can serve as a powerful means of reconnecting with cultural heritage and transmitting ancestral knowledge.

Guest Bio:
Jeffrey Yoo Warren (he/him) is a Korean American artist educator, illustrator, community scientist and researcher in Providence, RI, whose recent work combines ancestral craft practices and creative work with diasporic memory through virtual collaborative worldbuilding. He has spent years creating collaborative community science projects which decenter dominant culture in environmental knowledge production. Jeff is an educator with Movement Education Outdoors and AS220, and part of the New Old art collective with Aisha Jandosova, hosting art-making and storytelling events with older adults; he is also the 2023 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress for my ongoing project Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational reconstructions of erased historic neighborhoods of color.
His current artistic practice investigates how people build identity and strength through their interactions with artifacts and histories, and the ways that objects can tell stories that people can be part of in the present.