About the Project
Many of us - at least, in America - come from a long line of immigrants. But the current national climate promotes a homogenized culture that ignores the historic idea that we are a country formed from immigrant cultural traditions.
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Build a Longer Table, Not a Higher Wall
A Table For Everyone is an interactive political art exhibition that defies cultural homogenization, preserves a heritage process, and is a way of engaging the community in collaborative artistic activity.
The main focal point of the exhibit is a carved woodblock that is attached to the surface of a table. To create the woodblock itself, artist and activist Trisha Gupta will work with two to six refugee families. Trisha, in partnership with Amnesty International, has hosted community art events around Maryland. These events took place at the Sandy Spring museum and at a Wider circle.
Events like Thanksgiving for everyone welcomed new immigrant families to the community. Participants were asked to decorate kitchen items. These implements are collaborative combined efforts, made by many people. They bring together the traditions that immigrants left behind, the practical necessities of any life, and hopes for the future.
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The idea of meeting someone and taking the time to sit across from a table with them fundamentally changes the way we view people.
Our Mission
Started in response to the human rights issues seen during and the increasingly divisive immigration policy of the ex-Trump Presidency, A Table for Everyone offers therapeutic art activities to recent refugees to help them process trauma and loss due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis resulting from the changes to the immigration process. The attitudes of hate and the trauma of being abused and separated from your home and family have a profound impact on a person's sense of self. How do people process this type of loss and also share their experiences with others? How do we, as a community, make them feel valued? A longer Table seeks to answer these questions while making the community a safer, more welcoming place.
About the Artist
Trisha believes in art as a platform for social change. She currently runs the Studio In Sight program for Cornerstone Montgomery and is honored to teach and represent a variety of artists living with mental health issues. As an Occupational Therapy candidate at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, she has taught art to diverse populations in schools, homeless shelters, and off Rikers Island. She has also worked with Project Renewal at a transitional housing center and has worked as a service provider for older adults at SPOP (Service Provider for Older People) in New York.
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As an artist, she worked with Hope House and visited and worked with incarcerated men inside the prison system. She has worked in the therapeutic field for 8 years and has learned many strategies for facilitating and implementing therapeutic interventions.
Additionally, she has worked as a suicide hotline operator and as a vocational coach for youth at risk of homelessness.
She also teaches Indian sari woodblock printing designed to preserve the cultural traditions of her forebears as a way to resist increasing societal pressures that demand cultural homogenization. Reenacting this textile tradition reminds us of how different communities must work together for their survival.
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Read more about her story and purpose for creating this project here.