In the Right Hands
Tendencies 2024 – Nordic Contemporary Crafts
The 46th edition of Tendencies focuses on craft’s materiality, the work of the hands, and making statements through textiles.
Considered to be one of the dominant tools of contemporary crafts, the hand imparts knowledge, tradition, care, community, advocacy, and innovation. These abundant notions bloom from an extensive history while simultaneously contribute to defining the present.
With a specific focus on textiles, the biennale takes into consideration how this genre’s related materials and techniques have been accessible through time and social barriers while providing a universal language uniting generations and cultures.
Expanding on this foundation, the exhibition appropriates the phrase, “In the right hands”[1] as its title with the aim to demonstrate craft’s diverse perspectives and capacity to empower individuals to make statements about the world we are part of. In the Right Hands explores why materials and the work of the hand appeal to artists today, and how this relationship guides one to rethink and reevaluate society.
The exhibition presents the practices of artists based in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Their hands create sentences that narrate ongoing challenges in relation to politics and economy but also remind us that solutions emerge from imagination and making. In this context, the artists serve not only as mediators for the world around us — they guide us and offer possibilities that can only be found in the right hands.
Artists:
Henna Aho (Finland) Marsil Andjelov Al-Mahamid (Serbia/Norway) Kristina Austi (Norway) Lisa Englund (Sweden) Brit Fuglevaag (Norway) Tore Magne Gundersen (Norway) Ida Suvituuli Immonen (Finland/Norway) Kamil Kak (Poland/Norway) Esse McChesney (Sweden) Hanna Oinonen (Finland) Inger Johanne Rasmussen (Norway) Hilde Skancke Pedersen (Norway) Kristina Skantze (Sweden) Maja Stjärna (Sweden) Kristin Tinsa Sæterdal (Norway)
Curated by Maria C. Havstam and Anne Klontz
[1] Nicholas Norton, Becoming Elastic, “The Vessel: Modulating Craft,” 2023.
