Embedded Files
13 December 2026 at 3:30 pm New York time (UTC-5)
An invitation to register for this Zoom webinar will be sent to all current IOLI Members a week before the event.
To understand lace is to recognize absence as equally important as matter, and to embrace an insatiable desire for pleasure and beauty beyond productivity.
When Layla Nk fell in love with lace, she began seeing its potential everywhere. Her practice has since expanded lace into sculpture, installation, electronics, and performance, alongside narrative works in needle lace. By bringing together traditional lacemaking techniques and contemporary technologies, she explores how lace can move through its gendered associations to a medium exploring queer space and performance.
In this artist talk, Layla will share how her love affair with lace has shaped her artistic practice, both materially and conceptually. She will focus in particular on the possibilities opened up by electronics and light, figurative lacemaking, and her participatory procedural bobbin lace performance project, “Ground Ensemble”.
Instagram: @violetmenace
Website: https://www.laylank.com/
Layla Nk
Layla Nk
Layla Nk is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Jewish Museum, Objects USA: 2025 at R & Company, The Invisible Dog Art Center, and Mana Contemporary, with solo shows at Rosenfeld Gallery and The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
She created site-specific installations for the Little Islands Festival, New York Public Library, FRATZ Festival, and SoundScene at the Smithsonian’s Hirschhorn Museum. Nk participated in several artist residency programs, including LMCC’s Arts Center Residency, NARS Foundation, and Penland School of Craft.
She was a LABA NYC - Laboratory for Jewish Culture fellow, and a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship finalist in the category of Sculpture/Craft. She is the recipient of the 2023 OIDFA Young Lacemaker Award.
She teaches lacemaking at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, and is an Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design.
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