New Women’s Work: Reimagining feminine craft in contemporary art by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy: Excerpt

A celebration of “women’s work,” this book features contemporary artists from around the globe who are transforming what it means to make craft.

“Women’s work” has historically been relegated to the domestic, absent from galleries and discussions of “art.” From cross-stitching and quilts to baskets and decorative ceramics, women have spent centuries creating masterful crafts without recognition from the historians and institutions that determine whose names are remembered and whose work is celebrated.

This book explores these art forms, focusing on ten areas traditionally labelled as “feminine.” Featuring 38 contemporary artists from around the world, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy examines the traditions these artists work with and the boundaries they’re breaking. Through stories of family, migration, gender, and what it means to be a craftsperson, this book explores the future of the feminine in the arts.

For diverse communities of craftspeople worldwide who produce work for practical, spiritual, or sentimental purposes, including Indigenous groups and inhabitants of smaller regions, their work is intrinsically tied to their identity and has always been a point of pride, never shame; their crafts are not only a way of transferring knowledge but also signify physical, cultural, and economic survival.

This is true of the women in the African American community of Gee’s Bend, who began making quilts in the nineteenth century to protect their families from the cold, eventually developing a renowned style that prioritizes inventive material use. Contemporary artists who take up the loaded mantle of historical crafts, regardless of cultural connection, often become invested in the preservation and survival of their respective mediums.

While stigma still exists in pockets of the art market, women, artists of the global majority, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are reclaiming women’s work techniques now more than ever to engage in personal and political storytelling: a more inclusive version of early feminist movements. The art world is moving away from dismissive attitudes, recognizing artists’ engagement with women’s work as a conscious act of resilience and protest that resists patriarchal, societal, or art historical expectations.

In this book, we honor women’s work as methodologies of caring for and preserving history and languages at risk of being forgotten. Many of the artists featured are carrying family and cultural legacies into the future; in turn, these crafts also allow those who were born far from or migrated away from their ancestral homelands to remain anchored or to reconnect with their roots. The stories shared demonstrate that women’s work practices are a beacon of innovation and resourcefulness unparalleled in other visual arts and a source of empowerment for artists to come.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing