04/30/2026
Join us on May 14 for an artist workshop featuring Miya Turnbull. From 5:30 to 7:30pm, you will learn to make your own origami inspired by her self-portraits in “Like everything alive that we try to hold forever.” Pre-registration is required, so visit the link in our bio to sign up or speak with a MoFA team member. Read more about the workshop below!
“This participatory Origami workshop uses paper printed with my own self-portrait. Initially, my facial features appear fragmented across the flat surface of the paper, but as folds accumulate, the image shifts, becoming alternately obscured, reconfigured, and unexpectedly coherent. Participants will actively shape the portrait into several different traditional designs, some of which are interactive, emphasizing identity as something formed through gesture, pressure, and process rather than fixed representation.
By combining Origami designs with self-portrait imagery, the workshop introduces themes of repetition, transformation, and multiplicity that are central to my broader mask-making practice and connects to my Japanese Canadian heritage. Rooted in play and ritual, the activity invites participants to engage with identity through material interaction and spatial manipulation, foregrounding touch, movement, and making as forms of self-expression beyond realism.
The workshop will be hands-on and guided step by step in a small group, so no prior Origami experience is necessary. The Origami designs that you fold can be seen in the current exhibition “Like everything alive that we try to hold forever”, and will be yours to keep!
Workshops will take place in-person at FSU MoFA, while I join you all virtually from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Space is limited, and registration is required.” - Miya Turnbull
Through photography, sculpture, and video, the artworks in “Like everything alive that we try to hold forever” start to navigate the many issues that come with being human. Originally presented in 2023 at Esker Foundation in Calgary, Canada, and produced as a traveling exhibition by ICI, the exhibition’s first stop is FSU’s MoFA. This exhibition will be on view at FSU MoFA until June 27, 2026.
