Velvety lianas in a concrete house, a wild horse at the Police, a pillowcase for dreams at a workplace for socio-economic analyses and a figure rolled up in a mattress at the Employment Agency. The exhibition Make it Grow – Textile expressions as public art highlights textile works for public spaces. This selection from the Public Art Agency’s collection and production shows works expressing the growing power and breadth found in the textile field. The textile as a material surrounds us, our bodies and the objects in our everyday life. We can all relate to fabric, but what expressions does it take in art?
It was on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Handarbetets Vänner (Friends of Handicraft) that we turned our attention to textile works in the Public Art Agency’s collection and production. Over the years, hundreds of the Public Art Agency’s artworks for public spaces have been co-produced with artists and Swedish textile studios. The Public Art Agency’s collaborations with Handarbetets Vänner stretch back to the 1930s and give expression to both a desire to experiment and great trust; the artists worked in teams with the studios’ expertise in, for example, sewing, weaving and embroidery to transfer artistic expressions, techniques and ideas to a monumental scale.
The inspiration for the selection of works in this exhibition has its origin in Agneta Flock’s large-scale textile sculpture Det skall växa – Sammetsdjungel (It shall grow – Velvet jungle) from 1975 in collaboration with Handarbetets Vänner. The work was commissioned by the Public Art Agency for the then newly built parts of the quarter Garnisonen, which emerged on Östermalm in Stockholm. The billowing, colourful plants and soft materials of Det skall växa – Sammetsdjungel, in silk and velvet, broke off against the raw concrete of the huge office complex. With its brutalist concrete architecture, the building itself also stands in stark contrast to the surrounding older urban buildings. Both literally and figuratively speaking, Flock’s work has been a guiding-star for the selection work for the exhibition. Borrowing its name from the title of Flock’s work, the exhibition has also been influenced by the artist’s practice and the strongly sensuous and feverish growth of the velvet jungle, whose tropical foliage meanders far beyond conventional notions of what forms and expressions textiles as public art usually assume.
In the exhibition, Det skall växa – Sammetsdjungel is in dialogue with around forty textile works from the Public Art Agency’s collection and production of public artworks, expressing moods and temperament through the handicraft, materials and motifs. Here you will find a diverse range of practitioners; well-known, ground-breaking pioneers stand alongside more secretive and lesser-known, almost unknown, artists. Sensitively and with great knowledge, they are all artists who pursue and develop traditions, or eagerly move outside of conventions to explore new forms of presentation, expression and experiences through new materials or border-crossing artistic practices. The works in the exhibition are a small selection of all the works of art in textiles represented in the Public Art Agency’s collection, including textile public works made for specific environments. All these works meet people in their everyday lives – sometimes in the most unexpected places.
New expressions and new times
The velvet jungle in the exhibition was created in collaboration with Handarbetets Vänner 1973–1975 and is one of twelve jungle sculptures that Agneta Flock together with others, including seamstresses and trainees, created over a period of seven years, between the years 1968–1975. Since then, the velvet jungles have criss-crossed the globe and been shown in exhibitions from São Paulo, Dakar and New York to Budapest and Paris. At the same time, the velvet jungle is a seed of its time. The 1960s and 1970s were innovative decades for Swedish art; the traditional concepts of art were put to rest. During this period, several of the building-related public works, as well as the new art produced at the art schools, were inspired by experimentation and playfulness. The creative liberation not only characterized the expressions but also how artists were able to express themselves with greater freedom by reassessing techniques, the rules of the crafts and the conventions of the materials. Through her velvet jungles, Agneta Flock wanted to create an experience of warmth and humour, and she believed that only the textile material provided that possibility. The velvet jungle invites the audience to a game through the three-dimensional form spreading out and creating shadow play, and with sensuous materials envelops the viewer in the vegetation of the jungle.
Det skall växa – Sammetsdjungel also emerged in an important and formative time for textile art in Sweden; then an art field not so visible on the art scene, and an art field dominated by women. Art in textiles gained a higher status in Sweden during the 1970s, partly because more artists actively and often collectively worked to elevate textiles in imagery and were interested in exploring the distinctive forms of expression of textile techniques in contemporary art; partly because The Artists’ Association of Sweden (Konstnärernas Riksorganisation, KRO), for the first time gave textile artists the same membership status as other artists. The question of equality between the sexes were highly topical in society at large, which, among other things, was expressed in the introduction of parents’ insurance and the new Swedish Abortion Act. The UN designated the year 1975 as International Women’s Year and a few years earlier, the Swedish feminist organization Group 8 launched the slogan: “The private is political”.
The artists Sandra Ikse and Gunwor Nordström, whose works are included in the exhibition, were two of the initiators of Verkligheten sätter spår, 7 textilkonstnärer visar bilder (Reality leaves a mark, 7 textile artists show images). The exhibition was shown at the Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg in the autumn of 1975, broke attendance records at Kulturhuset in Stockholm in 1976 and also took place outside the walls of the establishment by being shown in workplaces and libraries around Sweden. Aiming to counteract the hierarchies in the art world and in society at large, the artists sought ways to create direct contact with visitors and new groups outside the art spaces. The artists also moved their studios into the exhibition space to personally meet the visitors and demystify the artistic work.
In this exhibition, it is just the other way round; the art you usually can experience in many thousands of public workplaces throughout the country has moved into our exhibition space to explore what the expression of textile art means in our shared public spaces. But like the artists of the 1970s, the artist Sarai Alvarez Riveros moves into the exhibition spaces with her work Den Sociala Väven (The Social Fabric) (2022), a work that usually takes place in the urban space, on the sidewalk or during festivals, where passers-by are invited to make a stop and embroider for a while with the artist. On some occasions during the exhibition period, the work will develop further and you can take part in creating it.
The desire to communicate through the special expressiveness of textiles, not least with needle and thread, is palpable in several ways. Esse McChesney’s embroidery Mastektomi (Mastectomy) (2020) is a new acquisition to the collection and depicts the scars of a gender-affirming operation that makes the abdomen appear more masculine. The meticulous, time-consuming embroidery clashes with strict body norms and brings to mind the long care queues, which make people torn between dreams, hope and despair. Here, McChesney is in dialogue with several other works. We think, for example, of Kaisa Melanton’s drawings with embroidery needle, Örngott för drömmar II (Pillowcase for dreams II) (1988), previously placed at the National Institute of Economic Research in Stockholm, and the artist Moki Cherry’s portrait-like applications Camouflage, Chefen (The Boss) and Kärno-Belle from the 1980s, which previously hung at the Swedish Prison and Probation Service. Cherry created the motifs in a time marked by the Cold War and the Chernobyl disaster. All the artists have moved the positions within the textile art field in their own way; these changes developed out of various needs to expand the visual language beyond the usual framework. Like the other works, Karin Bäckström’s Mackapär of Imaginary Spaces (2021) is a kind of diary account. The work consists of a large-scale macramé, created through collected materials from residents of Geneva and made together with the musician Jon Perman during an artist residency in the city. Elisabeth Eriksson also often works with embroidery on recycled textiles such as sheets, towels and clothes, and she is represented in the exhibition with the work Vad stirrar du på (What are you staring at) (2003).
Craft tradition in the present day
The exhibition also includes works by artists who, like Agneta Flock, make use of the craft tradition and the historical references of the materials to express new ideas. Sten Kauppi was among the first visual artists that Handarbetets Vänner contacted to collaborate with on commissions. Combining old weaving techniques with a freer view of art in monumental woven works, Kauppi came to be referred to as a pioneer in Swedish textile art. He was a painter, self-taught textile artist and many works were commissioned by the Church of Sweden, where he is remembered for a new and expressive style – a freer way of presenting the religious motifs in both form and content. José Luis Martinat’s Karnival (2021) is inspired by hope and by the idea of a new future. In the work in the exhibition, he brings together traditional ecclesiastical craftsmanship – embroidery sewn with gold and silver thread – with plastic materials from the contemporary construction industry. Sarai Alvarez Riveros revives the Chilean folk tradition of creating arpilleras – fabric appliqués enriched with stories about life during the Pinochet dictatorship. In her work Den Sociala Väven (The Social Fabric) (2022), it is instead the audience that gets to express their own messages and stories through embroidery. Painterly playing with genres, Petter Hellsing’s video Patched Up (2015) shows frequencies of urban scenes turning into an extended textile collage of colour, covering the image surface like a patchwork quilt. Hellsing’s main medium has long been the textile, and in the video the woven is intertwined with the city’s lines, spaces and life into a seamless dance.
Living sculptures
The idea of creating textile sculpture takes on many different expressions in the exhibition. Textiles play an important role in the artist Ingela Ihrman’s works in various formats, in everything from performance and film to sculpture. She often dresses herself in her sewn artworks – a kind of textile sculptures and costumes in one – in the form of other living beings to investigate different ways of being and relationships. The viewer contributes to social situations in Ihrman’s art, co-creating the work and the place together with the artist.
If you who had the opportunity to visit the sculpture biennial Örebro OpenArt this summer, you could take part in Valeria Montti Colque’s large-scale installation and performance El Rey gick ovan el Rainbow blev en vacker Rosa, festmåltid på Ekekas Mantel (El Rey went above el Rainbow became a beautiful Rosa, feast on Ekeka’s Mantle) (2024), produced as a temporary public performance by the Public Art Agency. Valeria Montti Colque is inspired by everyday life, religions, myths, rituals and popular culture. By creating characters that take over places and by joining together objects, images, symbols and stories – both from beliefs that are common in the Andes and from other parts of life – a new entirety is formed carrying new meanings. In Örebro, the 12-meter-high sculpture of King Charles XIV John got a new look when Montti Colque transformed it through colourful textiles into an Ekeka – a goddess created by the artist. The character is based on El Ekeko, the god who, according to folklore in the Andes, symbolizes success and prosperity. In connection with the opening of Örebro OpenArt, a number of Montti Colque’s characters led the audience in a ritual-like procession, from the Örebro Castle to the King Charles XIV John statue – an initiation rite culminating in the construction of a sacred memorial mountain, a so-called wak’a. Consisting of textiles, objects and pictures handed in by Örebro residents during the spring, the mountain now bears traces of many people’s lives. In the exhibition, we are visited by two of the work’s characters: The Sun and Black Wild Cloud.
That which grows
Obviously, the title of the exhibition, Make it Grow, also alludes to the origin of the textile. The word fibra, which means thread in Latin, has evolved into the word “fiber” in Swedish in the sense of “a thread-like formation in a plant or animal organism especially used as textile raw material […]”, according to The Swedish Academy Glossary. The art in this exhibition has sprung from materials that have literally grown – in some cases from the earth, such as cotton, flax and hemp, in other cases from animals, such as silk and wool. But even the carved wooden piece of fabric, Svepa (Sweep) (2023) by the artist Erik Thulén, consists of wood fibres that have grown from a single seed.
As a visitor, you soon discover that the artistic expressions take many different forms in the exhibition, that techniques and materials vary; synthetic fibres, plastic brushes, ropes and embroidery as graffiti are also included. Hopefully you will find some kind of textile logic where the artistic expressions sometimes offer resistance to a material idea, or break free from it. You can explore for yourself how different artworks from the mid-1960s until today have challenged the know-how, techniques, concepts and norms of a textile tradition, to influence and find their place in our common spaces. This is just the beginning. What grows, continues to grow.