Artists, Musicians Highlight Plight of Refugees at Mingei, One Stitch at a Time

A performance calling attention to the plight of the world’s many millions of refugees takes place Sunday at the Mingei International Museum in conjunction with a new exhibit.

Musicians with the Art of Elan will appear at the Balboa Park museum at 6:30 p.m. as part of the exhibit, “25 Million Stitches: One Stitch, One Refugee,” which opened last month. The program highlights folk traditions from around the world and features the world premiere of a new work for solo violin and string quartet by San Diego composer Yale Strom.

Performers on the slate include the Hausmann Quartet, Reza Vali and Sara Caswell. General admission for the show, with pre-concert viewing opening at 5:30 p.m., is $40.

Curated by Korean-American fiber artist Jennifer Kim Sohn, the exhibit is a community project with the goal of shedding light on refugees worldwide.

The figure represents the number of refugees estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees when the project began in 2019.

Kim Sohn, based in Sacramento, wanted audiences to become aware of the world’s refugees by visually revealing their number on embroidered muslin panels. In the show, more than 2,000 panels are combined vertically to create 408 floor-to-ceiling flags.

She knew 25 million “is such an astronomical number (that) it’s hard to grasp an understanding of how many people that truly is, but I thought art could help.” And she and her team crowd-sourced 2,300 stitchers from all 50 states and 37 countries worldwide to make it possible.

At the Mingei, the flags are suspended from the ceiling, allowing visitors to walk through and around the installation, in an attempt to create both an immersive and emotional experience.

The show continues in San Diego through Oct. 15. It opened in Sacramento, then traveled to Flagstaff in 2022. Future destinations include Los Angeles, Yuma and St. Louis, along with dates abroad, in England and South Korea.