the street is our gallery

Art challenges the status quo by its very nature but, with some artists, this is more evident than with others. That’s the case of the ‘craftivist’ Carrie Reichardt, who attended this year’s edition of Nuart Festival investigating the theme of ‘Power in the Public Sphere’.

Carrie Reichardt’s skills in sculpture, ceramics and print give her the freedom to create her own tiles, therefore inserting all kinds of messages in them: sometimes provocatively cheeky, sometimes satirically ironic, always very political.

She makes a “radical use of traditional things”, and that’s what she calls ‘craftivism’: an anti-industrial art movement born in the 1960s, when women turned their ‘hobbies’ (ceramics, embroidery and other traditional crafts) into protest artworks by dipping them into feminist theories and subversive political messages.

Championing the ‘craftivism’ movement, Carrie Reichardt creates witty, extreme and highly politicised works of art, like she did for Nuart 2017.

Her main outdoor work consists of a quote by Howard Zinn unfurling along a staircase in downtown Stavanger.

This installation was soon followed by a smaller piece that has appeared at Tou Scene –the Head Quarters of Nuart Festival- which twists a well-known quote by Albert Camus. (Featured image)

Carrie Reichardt’s artworks often focus on empowering different local communities: during Nuart 2017 she helped a group of teenagers that had taken part to her ceramics workshop to realize a rainbow-coloured, ‘we are all equal’ mosaic in occasion of Stavanger Pride Weekend.

For the indoor exhibition ‘Rise Up!’ (3 Sept. – 15 Oct. 2017) Carrie Reichardt made a series of colourful pieces representing the wide range of her art: it’s a series of mosaics mixing vintage floral, skulls, religious and political statements, which composes her funky yet socially aware pieces.

Text and photos by our on the spot representative Giulia Blocal from www.blocal-travel.com

ISSA is an official Media Partner for Nuart 2017