The New Politics of the Handmade

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 métiers 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.

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction, Anthea Black (California College of the Arts, USA) and Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada) 1. From Craftivism to Craftwashing, Anthea Black (California College of the Arts, USA) and Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada) 2. Ethical Fashion, Craft and the New Spirit of Global Capitalism, Elke Gaugele (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria) 3. Selven O'Keef Jarmon: Beading Across Geographies, Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada) 4. The Making of Many Hands: Artisanal Production and Neighborhood Redevelopment in Contemporary Socially Engaged Art, Noni Brynjolson (University of Indianapolis, USA) 5. That Looks Like Work: The Total Aesthetics of Handcraft, Shannon R. Stratton (Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists Residency, USA) 6. Craft as Property as Liberalism as Problem, Leopold Kowolik (Sheridan College and York University, Canada) 7. Zahner Metals: Architectural Fabrication and Craft Labour, Peggy Deamer (Yale University and Deamer Studio, USA) 8. Capitalising on Community: The Makerspace Phenomenon, Diana Sherlock (Alberta University of the Arts, Canada) 9. Morehshin Allahyari: On Material Speculation, Alexis Anais Avedisian (NYC Media Lab, USA) and Anna Khachiyan (independent, USA) 10. From Molten Plastic to Polished Mahogany: Bricolage and Scarcity in 1990s Cuban Art, Blanca Serrano Ortiz De Solórzano (Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, USA) 11. Things Needed Made, Nasrin Himada (independent scholar, Canada) 12. Secret Stash: Textiles, Hoarding, Collecting, Accumulation and Craft, Kirsty Robertson (Western University, Canada) 13. Shinique Smith: Lines that Bind, Julia Bryan-Wilson (University of California, USA) 14. Margarita Cabrera: Landscapes of Nepantla, Laura August (independent scholar, Guatemala/USA) 15. The Sovereign Stitch: Re-reading Embroidery as a Critical Feminist-Decolonial Text, Ellyn Walker (Queen's University, Canada) 16. Ursula Johnson: Weaving Histories and Netukulimk in L'nuwelti'k (We Are Indian) and Other Works, Heather Anderson (Carleton University Art Gallery, Canada) 17. 'The Black Craftsman Situation': A Critical Conversation about Race and Craft Sonya Clark (Amherst College, USA), Wesley Clark (artist, USA), Bibiana Obler (George Washington University, USA), Mary Savig (Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, USA), Joyce J. Scott (artist, USA) and Namita Gupta Wiggers (Warren Wilson College, USA) Index