Just what is it that makes today’s crafts so different, so appealing?? Swiss curator Nicolas Trembley has organized many projects challenging expectations on arts and crafts: the exhibitions Sgrafo and Fat Lava: Ceramics and Porcelain Made in West Germany, 1960-1980 (Centre d’édition contemporaine, Genève, 2010); Mingei: Are You Here? (Pace Gallery, London & NYC, 2013-14); and The Ceramics of Wifredo Lam (Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris, 2022); or the book Matthew Lutz-Kinoy & Natsuko Uchino: Keramikos (Walther König, 2021).In Craft, he offers an insightful, unconventional and generous reflection on the exchanges between arts, crafts, and design – questioning along the way arbitrary divisions between the head and the hand, practice and theory, craftsman and artist. Discussing with fellow curator Véronique Bacchetta his own curatorial methods and meditating on the power of display, Trembley unfolds his research on Japanese folk art, as well as his collaborations with various artists. As he comments on the groundbreaking approach of curators such as Georges Henri Rivière, Sōetsu Yanagi, or Lina Bo Bardi, and evokes landmarks in the history of exhibition making – from curiosity cabinets to world fairs, to ethnographic dioramas, window displays, and experiments by contemporary artists – Trembley argues against pre-established hierarchies, for a more complex approach to objects, cultures, and forms. With a wide range of illustrations, exhibition photographs, pictures from the author’s library, and historical documents cogently organized in Norm’s book design, Craft further reads as a stimulating visual essay on the exhibition form.
