Skirball Cultural Center

What We Carry explores how the experiences of immigration and displacement impact us, personally and collectively. Through community storytelling—the practice of sharing stories to preserve culture and foster connection—artist Jenny Yurshansky considers how we remember family history and how memories shape our sense of home and belonging. The artist, whose work is deeply informed by her family’s experience as Soviet Jewish refugees, examines the narratives that are carried in our everyday objects and in our bodies—they hold our stories even when one generation has tried to keep them hidden from the next. 

In a series of workshops she conducted at the Skirball from January to July 2026, Yurshansky invited people from across Los Angeles to share their family keepsakes and the histories connected to their mementos. The exhibition pairs sculptural replicas of these personal items created through 3D printing alongside objects from the Skirball’s museum collection. By engaging personal histories with the same care and importance as museum objects, the artist finds points of connection between the past and the present. What We Carry provides a space to honor memories both joyful and painful, shared and unspoken, so that we can find empathy in each other’s experiences.

This exhibition is organized by the Skirball Cultural Center and curated by Vicki Phung Smith.

Jenny Yurshansky (b. 1979) is a Los Angeles–based artist, born stateless in Rome when her parents fled as refugees from Soviet-era Moldova. She uses a research-based approach to explore the trauma of displacement, interrogating notions of belonging and otherness within the frames of landscape, historical documentation, and social constructs. 
 
Yurshansky received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and her BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has had recent solo exhibitions at The Wende Museum, Culver City, CA; the Beverly Hills Public Library, Beverly Hills, CA; Sam Francis Gallery at Crossroads School, Santa Monica, CA; 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA; Chapman University, Orange, CA; and American Jewish University, Los Angeles.  
 
Jenny Yurshansky is the Skirball’s Artist in Residence in 2026 and will participate in programming with the Skirball team and the broader Los Angeles community.