The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design

Description

Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy. The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.

Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and Assistant Professor in Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts. Her writing on contemporary art, craft and performance appears in The Craft Reader, Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, Making Otherwise: Craft and Material Fluency in Contemporary Art, and Rita McKeough: WORKS. She is the co-editor of HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education and co-publisher of The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism. Black has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, Norway, and The Netherlands, and curated Super String, No Place: Queer Geographies on Screen and PLEASURE CRAFT. Nicole Burisch is a Canadian critic and curator. She is based in Ottawa, where she is Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada. Her writings have been published in The Craft Reader and Utopic Impulses: Essays in Contemporary Ceramics, and periodicals including the Cahiers metiers d'art :: Craft Journal, and Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. She was Managing Editor for Desire/Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada, published by Mentoring Artists for Women's Art. She has worked with organizations such as Centre des arts actuels Skol and M:ST Performative Art Festival, and was a 2014-2016 Core Fellow Critic-in-Residence with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

While an anthology can do little more than introduce topics and provide roadmaps for further exploration, The New Politics of the Handmade does this well, covering not only current research but also providing copious notes, a helpful index and numerous colour illustrations. This is a volume to keep, and an offering that makes me hope for more to follow. * Galleries West * This exciting new anthology is an engaged and comprehensive overview of the political and ethical debates of contemporary craft and its pervasive social commitments. -- Jenni Sorkin, Associate Professor, History of Art & Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA The New Politics of the Handmade jumpstarts a sorely needed discussion about the unexamined claims that surround craft as a progressive political movement, a form of anti-capitalist consumption, and a sustainable practice. In this volume Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch have orchestrated an insightful conversation with a diverse group of scholars, artists, and curators about the role and power of craft in the contemporary art world that charts a more nuanced way forward. -- Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, USA The New Politics of the Handmade is a timely volume for craft studies that scrutinises the terms 'craft' and 'handmade,' both their problematic appropriation by consumer capitalism and their continued relevance as a byword for activism and social justice. From the off the book takes issue with craft's beneficent, comforting image that is shown to be susceptible to the affirmatory cultures of neo-liberal individualism. Essays explore craft's relationship to decoloniality, indigeniety, counter-hegemonic practices, feminism, pluralism, global exchange and identity, through an astute focus on specific craft processes and objects. It is an important text for the growing scholarly interest in craft. -- Stephen Knott, Lecturer in Craft Theory and History, Kingston University London, UK In their analyses of maquiladoras and makerspaces, Netukulimk and studio craft, the 'artisanal' and the 'craftwashed,' the artists, authors, and politically-charged perspectives that Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch have deftly woven into this collection break new paths for contemporary craft studies. Absolutely essential reading for those keeping up with this field's rapidly-expanding discourse. -- Maria Elena Buszek, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Colorado Denver, USA Nicole Burisch and Anthea Black have assembled an impressive group of established and emerging writers, curators, and makers to consider craft politics in all of its complexity. At once proposing craft as a response to urgent social and political issues spanning the globe while also critiquing it for being complicit in late capitalism. The breadth of approaches and understandings of craft in this volume showcase how its fluidity may be productive, from the perspectives of design, museum, fashion, architecture studies and importantly through a decolonial and critical race lens. Craft here is found within familiar places and spaces while also sought out in unexpected ones, from prisons to protests, take-away counters to factories. Interspersing thought provoking artist profiles with essays, The New Politics of the Handmade expands into the political, economic, environmental and social realms through craft in substantive ways, making it an important contribution to scholarship. -- Elaine Cheasley Paterson, Associate Professor of Craft Studies, Concordia University, Canada