Crochet, Gifts, Friends: The Politics of Softness
with Falaks Vasa
FIBER 630 001 | 1.5 credits | $50 Lab Fee
July 28 - August 3, 2024
Often, we crochet as something else happens – a class, a Netflix show, a catastrophe. Often, we crochet objects we don’t keep – a silly frog, a hundredth granny square, a scarf. Often, we crochet with friends, for friends – community, gifts, softness. In this class, we will turn our full attention to the gestures of labor and generosity that can enable a fiber art practice. We will learn the basics of crochet, practice it as individuals and in community, and create works that consider the audience and the gift of gifting carefully. Discussions and presentations will consider the work of Wells Chandler, Faith Ringgold, and Nina Katchadourian. Readings will include excerpts from Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Sara Ahmad's Queer Phenomenology, and we will screen the film Wool 100%. To enhance the communal nature of our discussions and learning, students will also be able to propose relevant screenings to host throughout studio work time. Assignments will invite students to unpack what gift-giving means to them while building technical skills, and the class will culminate in a critique and/or exchange of final crocheted projects.
Falaks Vasa (they/she, b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist, emerging writer, and award-winning educator from Kolkata, India, based currently in Providence, Rhode Island. Their work spans everything from crochet, 3D animation, and fiction, to performance, video, and stand-up, but always relates to the position, orientation, and experience of their own body. She graduated from Brown University with an MFA in Literary Arts in 2023, and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in 2018. Falaks has also attended artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and ACRE. They have published a poetry chapbook with the unnamed zine project, and written a speculative fiction novel, awaiting publication. They won the Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence for the course ‘Queer Strategies of Resistance: Fools, Tricksters, Shapeshifters’ in 2022, and have shown their artwork internationally at spaces like the Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver, the Queens Museum, NYC, and BARTALK, The Hague. Currently, Falaks is thinking about what to have for lunch today, although it is way past lunchtime.
Falaks Vasa, Pillowphone (from the series Pillows for the Pandemic, 2020, embroidery thread, polyfill, cotton fabric, 5.78 x 2.71 x 2.34 in.