The Art of Craft: Equity, Representation and Contemporary Politics

The art of craft – what are we really talking about? Basically, art and craft were popularly separate until this century’s insistence on using craft and its colloquially unrefined mediums and processes to convey concepts, protest extrinsic norms and achieve creative vision way outside of the modern-art-era-box. Art as defined by the masses and, for better or for worse, the spenders, now definitely includes craft techniques — fiber, ceramics, wood, metal and glass media manipulated for decoration or utilization. However shaky, craft achieves high-art status regularly now – obvious with just one visit to the power-house Art Basel’s website where images of craft-based media illustrate core components of the home-page.

Contemporary conversation regarding craft is no longer so focused on the relevance of craft as art, but one can certainly argue that craft is still on a lower pedestal and less valued. The artist residency program, Arquetopia shares my concern about lip-service regarding value recognition for historically marginalized craft (this parallels historically marginalized people valuation) as it describes the "fantasy performance of mutual exchange and reciprocity, and cooperation becom[ing] co-optation and appropriation" (Buick (2018) via Arquetopia, 2020). The residency program calls into focus issues of colonization and conquest – whether hard power (ie: Spanish conquistadors) or soft power (ie: tourism). It sounds like a tangent at first, but eventually it is obvious that a culture’s craft is not only perceived as different/unfamiliar by the colonizer/tourist but is also shaped, co-opted and demanded in ways that often do not acknowledge the culture and craft’s intrinsic values and profundity.

Colonization’s perpetual othering starts with the labeling of “savages” and the enslavement (capitalization) of people and continues to haunt us in the present despite our supposed enlightenment in the modern era.  Artist Andre Jackson, in his craft-based artwork and related writings, claims craft media as representative of otherness in art. Much like the feminists of the 50s and 60s claimed the gendered media of "women’s work" as a soapbox and a megaphone for communicating female legitimacy, artists today are using craft media to claim the variability, diversity and intersectionality of personhood expressed through creative practice. So now, "museums and academics over the last decade have paid renewed attention to art practices engaging with craft, propelled by a delayed recognition of the work of multiple artists neither white, male nor heterosexual, whose work made the art/craft categories obsolete" (Gotti, 2022) and we have a new politically founded focus in the art world — representation.

As long as our society’s norm posits that there are people who are not seen, heard and attended to with equity, there will be lack of representation and equal valuation in every category of society including the art world. Though the soulful, touched qualities of much of modern craft based art were often more profound and deeply connected to the human experience than "high art’s" derivative specialness (read: inflated valuation), the drive to maintain power structures negates art’s primary cause – expressing the ineffable, inner human experience. There is some hope for continued evolution of the art world’s integrity, as we are seeing more shows like Sanford Bigger’s "Codeswitch" at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2020, the Denver Art Museum’s "Desert Rider" exhibit and, Justin Favela’s "Vistas in Color" at Denver Botanic Gardens.

Having subscribed to or having been subject to the propaganda of colonizer/capitalizer, contemporary craft artists and aesthetic thinkers must now courageously put their hands and hearts back into the work of defining Art. Because there is a personal nature and daily utility embedded in the work, because intersectionality and integrity of the whole self are recognized as pillars of health on a personal and cultural level, because crafting connects us to our present and prima materia as part of this living planet, Craft is the radical antecedent to Art regardless of any collective belief system. So the question I pose now is, how do today’s wealthy art collectors (read: art-institution-influencers) and art institutions orient their power to support integrity and true value of the human experience? I will boldly answer: through the intersection and alchemy of art with craft – meeting and collaborating with the makers, making craft with their own hands, using crafted items daily and collecting craft art.