The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design

'THE BLACK CRAFTSMAN SITUATION': A CRITICAL CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE AND CRAFT

Roundtable with Sonya Clark, Wesley Clark, Bibiana Obler, Mary Savig, Joyce Scott, and Namita Gupta Wiggers

Chaired by Bibiana Obler and Mary Savig for Critical Craft Forum session, College Art Association, 2016

Editors: Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch

Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy.

The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.