Textiles

We live in a turbulent time in which we can sometimes lose our faith in the future. The digital dominates and we can feel like the virtual is taking over our lives. This makes the tactile, material and handmade ever more important. What we do with our hands creates a union between past, present and future, and makes us experience togetherness and feel human. We also need play, dreams, and the flight into the world of fantasy to temporarily escape from the harsh reality we are confronted with.

This year’s students in the Textiles programme strive, with artistic methods and expressions, to break away from the predictable and the usual, to create a world of diversity and wonder.

They ask questions about self-sufficiency – does it exist?
They seek comfort, and create it, for themselves and for others.
They want to experience with their bodies, let artwork become bodywork.
In a quest for identity, they create meticulously crafted accessories for alter egos with unimaginable power.
They long to see silence and listen to stillness in the middle of the noisy, busy world we live in.
They create unusable things, for the sake of beauty, as a contrast to the strictly measurable and functional.
They seek purification and transformation in the ritual.
They create protection for our bodies, with our own bodies.
In the twilight, they hope to find something beyond the everyday and trivial.

Elsa Chartin
Senior Lecturer in Crafts specialising in textiles