Workshop
Presented in TEXTILE TAKEOVER, a weekend-long showcase of innovation in Nordic textile art at Scandinavia House, join them for an adult art workshop with Danish artist Isabel Berglund! In this three-hour workshop, participants will join Berglund in creating a performance-piece, “People’s Paper Puff Jumper,” a work knitted by hand in paper yarn. The participants in the workshop will hand knit puff sleeves in light gray paper yarn with a colored edge that emphasizes the puff sleeve. The puff sleeve will be added to a larger hand-knitted piece, which will eventually become a large textile installation in the form of a communal paper sweater. The viewer will be able to enter the work and stick their arms through the pouffe arms and thereby become part of the work. The craft of “knitting” is set aside for a process where the work is created by the handprints of many different people.
All materials will be provided. TEXTILE TAKEOVER is presented in partnership with New York Textile Month.
Isabel Berglund uses yarn as a material to both embrace and challenge well-known shapes and objects. Sculpture and installation being her elements, Berglund’s works unfold in the boundary between the recognizable and the abstract where objects such as table legs, dressers, sticks, and bulky shapes blend. These well-known elements seem to be remodeled and given new meanings as they are covered in knitted cotton yarn. In the hands of Isabel Berglund, the knitting appears strong and energetic, often with loose ends fluttering in all directions and Berglund's knit allows her to make a shift or a displacement of her motifs; The works appear fluid in their form whether the knitwork is presented alone or as an organic extension of found objects. In this way, Isabel Berglund creates new rhythms in the recognizable objects, and she challenges the form and function which are otherwise clear. Isabel Berglund's works unfold as sculptural objects that are subjugated to a constant investigation of material, color, and space keeping the material's aesthetic quality and tactile sensibility in focus. The work titles are an entrance to a large, conceptual universe and the sculpture suddenly appear as animated objects that are awakened through their organic shapes and expressions. Isabel Berglund is interested in how different identities can concretely materialize in her works, and for that reason, she has on several occasions invited others to participate in the craft side of creation.
Isabel Berglund lives and works in Copenhagen. She holds an MA in Fashion Knitwear from Central Saint Martin’s College of Fashion and Textile, London and a bachelor in textiles from the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 2024, Isabel Berglund received the Ejvind Kold Christensen award and in 2018, Isabel Berglund received the Danish Arts Agency’s three-year work grant. Isabel Berglund is represented by Galleri Specta, Copenhagen.
Tickets cost $30.