Crochet, Gifts, Friends: The Politics of Softness

with Falaks Vasa
FIBER 630 001 | 1.5 credits | $100 lab fee
August 24–30, 2025

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, Deep Sea Chess, 2024, crochet and ceramics, 24 x 24 x 6 in.

Falaks Vasa (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist with a set of practices that move in and out of definition, but always through their body. Their practices span video, performance, fiber art, poetry, photography, 3D animation, stand-up comedy, and more. Falaks graduated with an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University (2023), and with a BFA from SAIC (2018), and currently teaches at RISD as Lecturer and Critic. Falaks’s lived practice currently takes the roles of an artist, writer, and professor. As an artist, Falaks has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and ACRE, and shown their work internationally. As a poet and author of speculative fiction, her work has been published by Sybil Press and collected by the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. As a professor, she enacts her pedagogy as creative practice, and has been awarded the Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence from Brown University. Falaks is from Kolkata, India, and lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her wife, a cat, and a ball python.