We are raging a battle, aren’t we? A battle between the material and the ethereal. Between the eternal and the fleeting, between the understandable and the infinitely unfathomable. This may feel exceptionally strong in this polarised time—but certainly there is a longing today to just surrender yourself to a now, a here, in a certain decisive intimacy. To feel body and soul united for a moment. There are many who testify and describe experiences of how crafting, creating and doing can bring about such a feeling of union. A feeling of being dissolved and becoming one with what you are creating.

This year’s graduating class represents both a wide and simultaneous cross-section. What they all have in common is a clear belief in chosen artistic expressions and methods as a force and a language in their own right. How the choice of a seam here, a warp weft there, a natural-dyed section here, a moving pattern and tonality there, are all choices that can define a work’s intentions and ultimate expression. Gentle, tactile, careless and risky manipulations are what build conscious, mature artistic and textile identities—ready for independent lives after school. This is represented in works where quilting and football culture constitute an exploration in heritage and environment, or in large colourful rugs that address masculinity and anxiety. Or in a rhizome-growing, peasantry-inspired project examining the place of desire in crafts, or in the material-alchemical project that creates leather from glue and transforms madness into virtue. Or in a one-size-fits-all collection that’s both about production and body norms.

While many of our students’ degree projects reflect a sort of elastic presence and reality, they also strive for a historical timelessness—a manic crafting and a fruitful embodiment.

Åsa Cederqvist
Senior Lecturer in Art with a specialisation in textiles