CRAFT!

Konstfack’s Degree Exhibition 2025 features the work of 19 students from the Master’s programme in CRAFT! It has been a pleasure to witness the students’ development over these two years of study and to see their degree projects finalised in this exhibition. There has been a great deal of hard work behind these pieces, which is evident in the amazing and innovative works produced by the students.

The degree projects in this exhibition include a combination of text and textile as a foundation for creating an alternative historiography; the exploration of everyday objects and acts, and how they connect us to one another; and examples of the roles of craft in society at large. The students’ degree projects raises awareness and provokes questions on topics such as how societal structures fail to provide security for those in need; war and peace; resilience and identity; and how we relate to grief, both as a biological and psychological phenomenon.

The students explore how jewellery is made and how it connects to people, and our responsibilities for those other-than-human; how a loom is built and how a weave can be constructed; the performative aspects of craft; and the possibilities of working with found materials. Methods such as ethnography, speculative design, the Graal technique, and the examination of the interface between stone and human existence are employed.

What you see in this exhibition are examples of the world and life, including the relationship between mother and daughter; the role of the familiar and everyday life; as well as the unknown. The grief, the happiness, and the possibilities of nostalgia in historical, personal, and progressive forms.

The exhibition explores concepts of Black aesthetics; the reclamation and reinterpretation of Palestinian material culture; relationships in East Asian families; intimacy and caregiving; the exploration of diaspora; what we discover when entering new spaces; heritage and our relationship to the past. Furthermore, the exhibition demonstrates how craft history affects us and the role of craft in a digitally-driven world, with craft offering an opportunity to redirect attention toward slower, shared, and in-between spaces. The students’ degree projects relate to memories, emotions, and the connection between the old and the new.

As a visitor, you will gain valuable insight into what contemporary craft is or could be. Several students degree projects interdisciplinarily, exploring the relationship between craft and other practices. The exhibition presents craft alongside text, performance, sound and video.

We are incredibly proud of the students and this exhibition. As always, this is a collective effort, and I am very grateful to my colleagues for their contributions, teaching and tutorials which helped make this happen. The students’ degree projects were discussed with teachers and peers and developed accordingly. These dialogues and reflections are crucial to our education.

When visiting the exhibition, I encourage you to take your time and pay attention to the details — the care for the material, the technical skills, and the countless hours spent creating and artistically developing each degree project. If you look closely, you may discover something unexpected, feel it, learn something new, and experience craft in a completely fresh way.

Maja Gunn
Professor of Craft!