Indigenous Fashion Talk and Quilting Workshop

Celebrate Indigenous resilience, cultural preservation, and creative collaboration in this two-part event presented by Relative Arts NYC. Co-founders Korina Emmerich (Puyallup) and Liana Shewey (Mvskoke) will lead a conversation exploring Indigenous fashion, community-building, and intergenerational knowledge-sharing through the lens of contemporary artistry, followed by a hands-on quilting workshop inspired by Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time.

The talk will highlight Relative Arts NYC’s representation of more than 50 Indigenous artists working in fashion, poetry, music, and visual art. Emmerich and Shewey will discuss Indigenous presence in urban spaces, intertribal solidarity, and how artists honor ancestral traditions while imagining Indigenous futures. Following the conversation, all are invited to hand-stitch fabric squares for inclusion in Then a Cunning Voice, an ongoing global community quilt project led by Yu’pik artist Emily Johnson / Catalyst.

Relative Arts NYC — Founded in 2023 by Emmerich and Shewey, Relative Arts NYC is a brick-and-mortar space in New York City’s East Village that uplifts Indigenous artists through collaboration, education, and celebration of Indigenous fashion and design.

Korina Emmerich (Puyallup) — Founder of EMME Studio and co-founder of Relative Arts, Emmerich is a fashion designer whose work has been featured at MoMA PS1, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of the City of New York. Her designs have also appeared on Project Runway and Vogue.

Liana Shewey (Mvskoke) — Director of Programming at Relative Arts, Shewey is an educator and activist focused on Indigenous liberation, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) awareness, and environmental justice, with extensive experience in music and event production.