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Juxtaposing Craft
National Museums of World Culture:
The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities
2022-2023, Stockholm


Juxtaposing Craft is an exhibition of craft and contemporary making in Japan and the Nordic region. The exhibition unfolds the past and the present by placing crafted objects, techniques and sites side by side and exploring them in relation to time, language, rituals and wisdom. By showing contemporary works alongside historical objects it considers the inter-connectedness of all things.

Juxtaposing Craft has been an ongoing process over the course of several years, in which curators Rebecca Ahlstedt and Anna Senno, have explored the collections of the National Museums of World Culture in Sweden. The exhibition also also includes objects from Dalarna Museum, Falun; Mucem, Marseille; and Galerie Mingei, Paris.

In three explorations, Materialities in Motion, Water Rituals and The Return of Silence, makers, designers and artists have produced new works in dialogue with the historical collections. 

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Unfolding the maker 


A moment is a time to be felt. A time that cannot be measured. Minutes, years — a moment encircles what it is filled with. Ambiguous yet precise. Perishable yet lasting. At this moment in time, when we measure to value, count and gain, we seem to need the perspective that a moment can give. Much of what we have learnt through making has disappeared or been forgotten. Consumerism, industrial methods, political oppression and economic exploitation have all changed our material relationships and altered the connection between nature and the making hand. Historical and indigenous knowledge, techniques and skills, however, are beginning to reassert themselves. In craft we can see how both makers and objects embody an evolving dialogue with time, place, materials and techniques. Our relationship with the hand emerges as a reminder of the origin of our proficiency in making, as a means by which our imagination is unleashed. A crafted object may materialise countless ways of relating to this world and might even house our souls. The crafted object can perhaps be considered as a ‘maker’ in its own right: making moments of connections between us, our memories and our environment. Within these connections lies a greater story about our own complex being as part of everything.

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