Akash Inbakumar

A future where craft objects play the role of carrying family lineage, storyteller and genetics, compared to the colonial west’s nuclear family. Often taking the form of wearables, these objects hope to give the wearer the opportunity to transform into material-human hybrids that can peek into Inbakumar’s dream world.

Atanas Bozdarov

Rooted in my lived experience with a physical disability, my practice takes my relationship with the built environment as a starting point for investigating access. Incorporating photography, graphic design, and sculpture, my work is concerned with exploring the function, use, and uselessness of art and design objects to reveal failures of structures and systems.An ongoing series of objects that resemble access ramps borrows strategies from critical design to examine accessible and inaccessible architectural structures and the extent to which accessibility devices exist and serve their purpose. Making uselessness apparent in faulty design, absurd material choices, and incomplete construction, the objects’ makeshift construction speaks of urgency, while the absence of viable functionality calls attention to the failure of ramps as a minimal solution.Extending the sculptural exploration of ramps, my recent work is the result of photo- documentary fieldwork in Inglewood and Kensington, the two Calgary neighbourhoods selected to be part of Ramp It Up—a local initiative inspired by Toronto’s StopGap Foundation, an organization that promotes barrier free spaces by providing small access ramps to business in Toronto. The series of photographs of ramps that I encountered in these two Calgary neighbourhoods include: a ramp flipped upward and half buried in dirt; asphalt- mound ramps; and the first brightly painted portable ramp produced by the “Ramp It Up” initiative. Presenting these ramps images as a large-scale banner repositions them as objects worth paying attention to. At the same time, by highlighting a few ramps, the work encourages the viewer not only to notice ramps, but also the many moments when ramps are not functioning or absent, and access is denied.

Ramp seriesInstallation

Clemens Thornquist

The work is the second part of a series of analysis of human existence in relation to wild landscapes. The installation explores and analyses the risks and hazards of the wild landscapes through the domesticating qualities if textiles materials. The work explores and demonstrates through physical expressive abstractions the mediation and negotiating between the wild landscapes and the human being for trust.

Erin Lewis

The work aims to demonstrate the use of artificial intelligence engines as a sketching method in the design of textile antenna object. The work will be provided as a series of screen-based images depicting sketches of textile antennas made in AI. The knitted textile antenna object is made from the sketches and will be placed on a plinth in front of the television. It will be connected to a small speaker and drive circuit that will demonstrate how, when one interacts with them, there is interaction with electromagnetic fields. The result is a sonic expression.

Textile antenna object70cm tall, 30cm wideTechnical requirments: Mains power Power bar Plinth Display screen on stand (large – e.g., 72’’)

Helga Halldorsdottir

The never-ending object. The role of the artefact is absolute. The artefact is the method, the sketch, the research, the process, and the eventual result. However, the artifact cannot really be studied without the existence of the body and the individual. The never-ending object series of exhibition are planned to run for as long as needed and for a long as it takes for the initial objects to become devoid of definition. For instance, when does a ball stop being a ball through abstraction of alternative behaviour? The never-ending object.

Karin Landahl & Stefanie Malmgren de Oliveira

This research project explores the expressions of waste materials and their potential for reflection, speculation and poetics in fashion design. 25 discarded knit garments, devaluated and unsellable post-consumer waste materials, were sourced and explored in four experimental sequences: to lay, to wear, to knot, to compress. ‘Discarded garments’ is a terminology that points towards the consumer as responsible for devaluing and discarding garments, while leaving out the designer’s responsibility and actions in relation to garment waste production. Here we show a shift in perspectives and we introduce the new terminology ‘Discarded design decisions’ for the unwanted goods, and ‘expressions of discarded design decisions’ as terminology for the new outcome. The approach of working with the same material, 25 discarded sweaters throughout all the explorations in one way of ‘Staying with the trouble’ as the title of Harraway’s book suggest (2016). The actual problem, waste garments, serves as material to think through, while one of the same trouble piles of material is used for each experiment, there is no ‘new start’. The design material, the discarded design decisions, were unsellable-post-consumer waste knit garments, given to our project from the sorting facility of a local non-profit organization. The donated material consisted of 25 discarded, devaluated knit sweaters, that then served as a ground for exploration. The total amount of sweaters as used without conducting any further selection process. The array of 25 sweaters, were looked upon as one material range to work with and reflect through. The overarching approach in all of the experiments relates to Ingold (2019) ‘‘Rather than reading creativity ‘backward’, from a finished object to an initial intention in the mind to an agent, this entails reading it forwards, in an ongoing generative movement that is at once itinerant, improvisatory and rhythmic’’.

Marjan Kooroshnia

Woven light interference utilized dichroic filters to transform an empty location into an incredible wonder-filled universe through the use of non-standard textile materials. Each textural installation offered a warm and sensuous visual experience that encouraged personal engagement within the space. Visitors to the installation moved around the illuminated textiles to view the creations from varying angles, revealing the materials’ colors combined with the luminous reflections upon the walls. The viewer’s imaginations were captivated by the colorful, textural patterns, dazzling light, and sensual nature of the engaging space. In combination, the fluidity of these aspects could be described as visual music through a subjective sense of memorable enjoyment while exploring new and exciting materials for textile installations.

Sameer Farooq

A series of hand-shaped ceramic objects are fashioned by Sameer Farooq to imitate the forms and shapes of museum-quality packing material used to protect and wrap precious artifacts for shipping and storage as found in museums worldwide, including the Aga Khan Museum. These clay objects are arranged in an archival method, placed in a vitrine which mimics museum display conventions. The objects are physical metaphors for what is missing, the invisible hand of those who work in museums, and represents how archives struggle to give us the full picture of a lived experience.Farooq felt a kinship between his desire to complicate seamless notions of pluralism in culture with these vital, present packing materials through representing what is not seen, what is missing, or what is not captured. His objects explore ideas of cohesion and fracture, entanglement and exclusion, integration and erasure through creating objects that reflect the invisible hand of museum workers: the evidence of their presence is in the materials and choreography of the objects.

Pouf (based on tissue paper)Unglazed paper clay, 2017. Photo: Sean Weaver

Soheila K. Esfahani

My Cultured Pallets series uses shipping pallets to embody and facilitate cultural translation. These transient installations emerge from my ongoing process of marking shipping pallets with various designs and ornamentation and an email address/hashtag. After exhibiting the work, I return the pallets to circulation and track them by engaging in email correspondence with those who find them. By remaining in a permanent state of transit, the works symbolize “in-betweeness.”Returning to the etymological roots of translation as “carrying or bringing across,” my practice explores the concept of cultural translation as the act of “carrying or bringing across” units of culture. These decorated pallets metaphorically serve as objects of holding: “bearers of culture” that continuously circulate across peoples and cultures.The Vagireh Pattern is part of the Cultured Pallets series. The pattern for this installation is based on a design from a Persian book of illuminations. This particular pattern is a continuous design that can be expanded in both directions. The word “vagireh” means transmittable or contagious. This installation reflects these ideas in both a practical and conceptual way. Practically, the inscribed pattern can be expanded onto a larger number of pallets, and the pallets will re-enter circulation. Conceptually, the installation refers to the spread (transmittance) of cultural motifs in various societies.

“The Vagireh Pattern”Laser-etched wooden shipping pallets, 62”x48”x40”, 2010