Create your own special ornament - workshop by Guatemalan textile artist Sylvia Tenebaum -

Sunday October 19th

10AM–1PM (3 hours)

Join my dear friend, Guatemalan textile artist Sylvia Tenenbaum, for a super fun and colorful workshop in my Brooklyn studio.

We’ll be making special ornaments,  hanging objects — decorated with sequins, beads, shells, and all kinds of beautiful details. Each piece will be your own little symbol or story — something to hang on your wall, door, above your bed, or as a mobile.

Sylvia will guide us through how to plan and design our own creations — playing with color, shape, materials and texture to express your story in your own way.

 

I’ve been working with Sylvia for over eight years, creating wool pieces in the highlands of Guatemala, and I’m so excited to host her in my studio this time. I always learn so much from her.

~

Sylvia Tenenbaum, a textile artist born in Guatemala City, 1965, explores materials, textures, and cultural heritage in her installations.

A self-taught artist, Sylvia earned a BA in Hispanic Literature and an AA in Fashion Design. She founded her brand ZYLE in New York City, creating innovative scarves and caps. Returning to Guatemala, she was inspired by Mayan ancestral dress, Mesoamerican weaving traditions, and began working with repurposed textiles, blending traditional techniques with contemporary art.

Her notable works include PALOPÓ, a large-scale aerial mosaic, about the community of Santa Catarina Palopó of Lake Atiltlán; it tells a narrative of cultural identity through color, winning the Public’s Choice Medal at the London Design Biennale. Weaving Geographies, represents the Ixil community from northern Guatemala and the department of El Quiché, which still preserve their deeply rooted traditions and character. Lo Innombrable, a memorial piece exhibited at the Holocaust Museum in Guatemala City, is an intricate cartography about the darkest moment in history, elaborated with repurposed circularly sustainable fabrics.

Sylvia’s most recent works are large hand-woven prayer rugs, studies of light–woven on foot looms into fabric that invite spiritual contemplation. These pieces explore the intersection of geography, spirituality, and the human hand, offering a meditation on the sacred, the personal, and the transcendent.

Her art is a testament to the enduring power of textiles as a medium for storytelling and cultural memory, honoring tradition while interweaving it with innovation, welcoming viewers to reflect on the complex relationship between heritage and contemporary life.

Through her work, Sylvia continues to push the boundaries of textile art to create powerful stories of postmodern culture.