Crying Rya: A Practitioner’s Narrative Through Hand Weaving

Abstract

This research project examines a repeated focus on time and slowness that I have experienced over years in connection with my hand-weaving practice using the Scandinavian technique of rya. Research through my own studio practice has led me to question a public image of weaving as time-consuming or slow and why temporality is attributed to the finished object, while I claim that it is only experienced in the making process.

The claim of weaving as slow does not consider the body that weaves. I have wanted to highlight the myth of slowness in crafts and handweaving that does not always match my experience of the bodily knowledge of weaving. The aim is to use myself and my own practice as a hand-weaving artist to explore what is beyond these recurring concepts. My knowledge includes conditions such as frustration, boredom, irritation, as well as joy, curiosity and fascination. This research is thus motivated by what I see as incomplete knowledge, where my contribution consists of understanding my own practice, with transparency through my own knowledge development that I hope is useful more generally to future craft research.

I have combined my writing with several rya projects made in recent years (2016–2022) structured from a personal perspective around my interest in reflection on artistic practices, my body in making and the figurative rya weaves I create. My research offers an example of how the connection between claims about weaving as slow and time-consuming collide with the experience of the development in the studio, as well as with my own body, in a hand-making practice.