early childhood

Crafts as a medium

When started my first bachelor studies in HSE Art and Design school, I learned that there are a lot of different experimental approaches in the field of contemporary art. At that time I was also quite interested in both the theoretical side of art and the practical one. I have discovered that texts about art can be reflected on and used as a source of inspiration or new ideas.

While working with traditional female needlework such as crochet and embroidery I was thinking of the specific eanings that these techniques contain in themselves. This made me think that this can make it another medium of contemporary art as far as it is used more broadly in art projects nowadays. As the painting has its own specific meanings of the medium (the flatness, illusion, etc), knitting, for example, is associated with something warm and cozy, harmless and mostly female. That is why conceptualizing these specific qualities of knitting can also bring more complex meanings of it as a medium itself.

Crafts as a hobby

Arising interest

in contemporary art

Crafts as a medium

Here is a part of my essay called "Stigmatisation of knitting as a medium of contemporary art" .

 

"To support my thoughts, I would like to give several examples with the works of
contemporary artists who use these particular qualities or stigmas of the
knitting medium in their work. Firstly, I would like to mention such an author as Nathan Vincent, who crochets various household items, as well as soldiers, gas masks, grenades and other weapons, as the main images of masculinity. With his practice, he also confirms the thesis about the stigmatisation of the medium of knitting and its stereotypical gender stigma. Aggressive objects made from openwork colored yarn creates a paradox and some mockery of the prevailing stereotypes.

Secondly, it is worth mentioning A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew, an
installation-intervention in the urban space by Alisa Dvorsky. In this project, the
artist refers specifically to the “warmth and comfort stigma” of knitting and dresses
the trees in sweaters. This work is located in the park, next to the children’s
hospital, which also reinforces the thesis of “coziness” of knitting. By the way, the
artist spent all her work over 6 kilometres of yarn.
Thirdly, if we talk about Russian contemporary authors, we can recall the works of
Katya Lyubavskaya. In her project «Cozy Light» she also refers to the theme of
comfort and warmth through the technique of needlework. The artist knits small
canvas-lamps from multi-colored neon cords on knitting needles and thereby
creates utilitarian works of contemporary art. The artist treats her slightly naive
works with irony, which is what the literal name of this project says".

 

 

Full text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7SZ9ZXlcMXB39P_hID4L4ptscYUCZMY/view?usp=sharing

 

Patterns

nowadays

Parasiting