The Politics of Craft: The Renaissance of Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art

This course, which is delivered in a lecture format, examines the resurgence of textiles and ceramics in contemporary art, emphasizing their political, cultural, and social dimensions. Textiles and Ceramics are centuries-old media, yet in most of Western art history they have been viewed as inferior to painting and sculpture. When Anni Albers wanted to study at the Bauhaus, she was automatically enrolled in the textiles division, as women weren't allowed to study painting. Recently, however, craft has made a comeback, with many museums staging exhibitions and re-arranging their collection to foreground textile and ceramics works. We will study artists in the 20th century who paved the way (Sheila Hicks, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Ruth Asawa, Magdalena Abakanowicz) and younger artists who use the medium to criticise the power structures of today (Cecilia Vicuna, Teresea Margolles, Margorzata Mirga-Tas, Grayson Perry, Igshaan Adams). Studying Rosita Parker's influential 1984 book 'The Subversive Stitch', we will explore how craft offers artists a way to express ideas of resistance, studying feminist and queer, post-colonial and indigenous practices.