Before a body speaks, it listens. Listening begins long before birth, through multiple senses, becoming perhaps, the body's first way to orientate itself in the world. After listening, language can begin to form. A language that speaks of what's essential.
The graduation show Talking Hands from HDK-Valand's Master's programme in Craft suggests that speaking happens not only through words, but through objects shaped by years of attentive listening. Through listening, themes and questions emerge: How can we materially remember and re-enact dialects and spells that have been forgotten? How does wearing jewellery and clothes create desire and leave traces on our bodies? What does it mean to decorate the everyday and mundane objects we surround ourselves with? How can textiles act as a medium for anticipatory grief? What is the meaning of place and belonging for objects in constant migration? How can traditional craft techniques be applied in new ways, in order to create new abstract images and stories? How can symbolic clay objects help us understand our experiences beyond words?
Together, these questions form a prism of objects through which to view the world and the students' interpretations of the society they inhabit. Each work reveals carefully chosen materials, methods, and techniques, developed through the rigorous processes of their degree projects.
The works arise from an educational context that demands not only technical skill in the studio and workshop, but also conceptualisation, writing as a means of contextualising their work and collective engagement. A final exhibition is a beginning. The start of many careers of artistic practice, showing fragments of what has been achieved during a solid education, fragments of possibility. The fragments shown in Talking Hands offer important clues to what lies ahead, they show that the future of craft is multifaceted, critical, technically distinctive, beautiful — and, above all, hopeful.
Åsa Dybwad Norman
Senior Lecturer in Textile Art, HDK-Valand
Official opening
Saturday 10 May, at 12:00-16.00 (no registration needed)
Exhibiting students
Emma Holmgren, Maria Östblom, Klara Helin, Zara Arnell, Gum Lina Gabrielsson, Shiyao Sun, Shen Zhang, Helena Lundahl, Elena Aldrighetti, Effers Anni Rickardsson, Oktawian Dawid Bohdziewicz, Karolina Konarska, Marie Verger, Malin Lidén
Opening hours and accessibility
- Tuesday–Thursday: at 12:00-18:00
- Friday–Saturday: at 12.00-16.00
- Sunday: at 12:00–15:00
How to get to Galleri Thomassen: Tram 9 or 3. Get off atVagnhallen Majorna, walk 480 m to the gallery.
Accessibility: Elevator in the buidling.
More information to come closer to the event.
GRADUATION 2025: other graduation events during the spring of 2025.
