I wait behind the factory gates – an exhibition with textile as incitement. In collaboration with Konstfack.

Group exhibition
Project rooms, Färgfabriken

Participating: Miwa Akabane, Evelina Hedin, Manja Hunger, Aiko Kubo, Bianca Nabuco Anna Nordström, Emma Persson, Dagmara Stephan

Eight works exploring the borders of the textile field and possibilities within. A group exhibition with the master students in Textile in the Expanded Filed at Konstfack.

Textile in the expanded field strives to investigate textile as a material as well as broaden its field. Within this exhibition textile is used in many ways, as a material but also as a concept, as we’ll see through the works of these eight artists. They themselves represent the basic idea of the broader approach to this field, they come from different parts of the world, Brasil, Canada, Japan, Germany and Sweden. They have different areas of interests as well as various experiences from former studies as art, graphic design, fashion, industrial design and design.

Participating artists and artworks:

Miwa Akabane – walking waking dream. “I napped for a while this afternoon. Today’s dream was different from yesterday’s. But already, I cannot recall what I dreamt of today. Now is already past”. The work presents one single daily and ordinary scene expressed through textile pattern made by light and shadow. The repetitive pattern refers to the daily life built on a forever on going monotonous, but at the same time unique rhythm. Even daily life is full of chance or unpredictable events. Through this artwork Miwa Akabane connects the unconscious dream world with the everyday life.

Evelina Hedin  Ownership reversed. There is a table, a frame and a currency, seemingly invariant lines of argument. The work is a reaction on power and subjectivity concerning relationship to place. Objects are operated and positioned in the installation in order to disestablish what is evident. What can be found through retrieval and distortion of material? Can I dissect the constituent parts of a fact until it is no longer true? Through material and text Evelina Hedin investigates the meaning of places and the absurd attempts to describe and look upon place objectively.

Manja Hunger Cilla Ramnek/Manja Hunger – 2006/2011. In 2006 Cilla Ramnek designed a collection of fabrics for Ikea and five years later in 2011 Manja Hunger bought one of these. This artwork is consisting of two parts that use this very ready-made fabric as a starting point. One part is a collage made by the artist and for the other part she commissioned the fabric designer to make a new textile work. By presenting these collages as her own work, Manja Hunger points out and refers to the origins of the working material and touches upon notions of authorship and originality.

Aiko Kubo – Blue moment. This work strives to sense an invisible atmosphere or presence, the Blue Moment. This moment follows the story of the transition between day and night. The installation of linen pillars intervenes with the architectural space and by walking through the piece one will feel the reverberating undulation of textile. Aiko Kubo is attempting to visualize conditions, the very material and the environment in space through artificiality. Textile is affected by external conditions more than most other materials. Therefore, it can visualize fine conditions in the air.

Bianca Nabuco  Keeping together. Attachment, emotional connections, uncontrollable human conditions. The encounter of two distinct bodies. In the search for the image of an intimate relationship between corps, an ordinary body-object situation is expanded and shaped as one. By playing with the limits of reality Bianca Nabuco explores the possible borders between self, body, and surrounding. Focusing her projects in the body-object relationship she is interested in unconventional images that communicate through senses, poetry, and materiality.

Anna Nordström  Concern 1 Concern 2. The two types of fabric both evoke an idea of what’s considered feminine. This stereotype idea of the “feminine” is then reformed through Anna Nordström’s applied techniques. Concern 1 merges the ridiculous and the faux-expensive in the shiny synthetics with a hexagangular shape from the professional world of science (math/biology), through a traditional woman labour. Concern 2 emphasizes and at the same time de-emphasized what’s typical with this very floral pattern. The surface is built up by two different colour schemes of the same pattern, as a chessboard.

Emma Persson  Be civilized. The pyjamas as everyday clothes can be a way to express critique. When Shanghai hosted the world’s fair 2010, the regime tried to stop people from wearing their pyjamas in public space. Though this is an old tradition in Shanghai, they now feared that citizens would look uncivilized to the West. It is a very small difference between a pyjama shirt and an ordinary shirt, but we still make careful selections of what garment to wear at what place. In this work Emma Persson uses clothes as a tool to question and reveal the social norms and structures in society.

Dagmara Stephan  A collection of banal knit objects. 17 gloves made at once, growing out of each other. A long sock, when folded flat, will spell out a word. These objects are not quite practical, at the same time they are not without a concrete function either. They aim to inspire questions on relations between comfort, use, and everyday objects. Ambiguous in function yet highly tactile, Dagmara Stephan’s work provides a space where assumptions about textile, function, and the body can be experienced in playful, and improvised ways.