About London Craft Week -part I-

Gaining Ground

My screenshot (Gaining Ground branding domestic, 2022)

Exhibited at the Crafts Council and curated by Ligaya Salazar, Gaining Ground is a show that emphasises knowledge of global craft methods that include an appreciation for soil, biodiversity, local materials, and production systems.

Through reading, conversation, and exchange the exhibition has been developed as a learning environment; as well as asks visitors to consider how knowledge is produced and accessed by interrogating the function of libraries and archives as prisms through which tales and narratives are constructed. It focuses in areas where colonialism and capitalism have harmed natural environment and maintained artisan knowledge that will be passed down to future generations. Several projects address this by creating self-managed, open-access digital platforms and handbooks that catalogue these regions historical crafts.

Gaining Ground Exhibition (2022

Gaining Ground Exhibition (2022)

Nine projects, although geographically and socially distinct, question what we can learn from craft to inform climate action and in our quest to build a more sustainable world for the near future. Each project is highlighted in this show through a display of films, photography, audio, handbooks, raw materials, and craft objects making it much more interactive and interesting for the audience besides communicates the diversity of craft methods and practices directly relating with its origins.

The exhibition draws on the British Council's Crafting programme and features work by artisans and researchers from countries across the world, including Bangladesh, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Argentina, Nicaragua, Guayana, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

1. Artisan Voices: Dialogues for sustainable practices Argentina and India, 2019-ongoing britishcouncil.org.ar/programas/artes/arquitectura/-diseno-moda/artisans-voices-dialogues-sustainable-practices

2. Building a library for the future Brazil, 2021-ongoing

3. Cultivating an earth-based practice Mexico, 2021-ongoing guapamacataro.org @ionemariarojas

4. Karighor archive Bangladesh, 2021-ongoing

5. Kilubukila Democratic Republic of Congo , 2019-ongoing kilubukila.com

6. Making nature Indonesia and the United Kingdom, 2021-2022 community21.org/partners/makingnature

7. Promoting Indigenous identity through pottery Guyana, 2021-ongoing cobracollective.org @glazedexpressions

8. Relocating the loom: Handweaving Philippines, 2019 e-space.mmu.ac.uk/625578

9. Womens´earth-bulding revival and ´magic mud´ Nicaragua, 2019-ongoing mujerescinstructoras.org/en/home

My screenshot (@glazedexpressions, 2022)