Juna Skënderi is an Albanian-born, multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans textiles, found objects, video, performance, and mixed media. Rooted in slow, deliberate processes like embroidery, sewing, and weaving, her work is both personal and political. An act of survival and timekeeping in a world that rarely pauses.
Through assembly and disassembly, she engages with textile traditions as a way to reflect on identity, memory, and home. Her pieces explore the tension between belonging and displacement, often bridging the domestic with the conceptual. Whether stitching by hand or reimagining symbols of national identity, she uses her materials to communicate complex emotions of love, grief, nostalgia, resilience.
Now based in Santa Fe, she continues to reflect on the immigrant experience and the ways in which place and history shape us. Her work has been exhibited at Sun & Dust Gallery (NM), PS122 Gallery, Ed Varie, The Border Project Space, Accent Sisters, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and TheaterLab (NY).
EDUCATION
2010: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Filmmaking, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ
RESIDENCIES & AWARDS
2026: Art is the Solution - Santa Fe Arts Commission, Santa Fe, NM
2020: Queens Art Fund Grant, Queens Council on the Arts, Queens, NY
2019: Monson Arts, Monson, ME
2018: 77Art, Rutland, VT
2014: Theaterlab, New York, NY
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024: Zemra Ime, Sun & Dust Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026: [Table], Community Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2025: Santa Fe Lamp Show, Santa Fe, NM
2024: Untitled Group Show, Tree Sound Studio, Atlanta, GA
2023: The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Ps122 Gallery, New York, NY
2023: Parasites and Vessels, Accent Sisters, Jersey City, NJ
2021: Is It a Good Time?, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ
2021: Borderwalls III, The Border Project, Brooklyn, NY
2020: Notes From the New Interior, Ed Varie, New York, NY
2020: Incubator, Friday Studio Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019: Wish You Were Here 19: Annual Postcard Show, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019: Flat File 2019, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY
2018: Paper-Ballad, La Cápsula, Zürich, Switzerland
2018: Viewpoints 2018, Studio Montclair Gallery, Montclair, NJ
2017: Online Exhibition Show #42: String Theories, Field Projects, New York, NY
2016: Artists Respond to the Election, The Living Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2016: Garden Party, Collective Arts Incubator, Los Angeles, CA
2013: Greenhouse Gala, TheaterLab, New York, NY
2012: Outlaw, White Box Gallery, New York, NY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wang, Xuezhu Jenny. “Thread and Fiber: Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva” Art Spiel, December 18, 2023
Liu, Kate. “Goings On” Franklin Furnace, August 14, 2023
Bertun, Sydney. “Making in a Pandemic: Juna Skënderi” Medium, August 13, 2021
De Vries, Susan. “Revel In the Art of Bushwick This Weekend With Bushwick Open Studios” Brownstoner, September 17, 2019
Vivas Hernández, Pedro. “A Place to Call Your Own” Vimeo, February 9, 2019
Nostrand, George. “A Place at the Table: Artist Reflects on Immigration Debate” Rutland Herald, August 28, 2018
“The Political Reality of the USA in the Embroideries of the Albanian Artist”, Koha, June 24, 2018
Limani, Lura. “Albanian/American Dreamer” Prishtina Insight, November 10, 2017