World Hope Forum
creations by Arne & Carlos
Healing Trauma Through Craft
Recent events continue to challenge our sense of humanity on an international scale and so the next edition of World Hope Forum has gathered speakers who practice mending, caring, and giving; a hopeful attempt before the Holidays to knit society back together.
Curated by Philip Fimmano
Philip Fimmano & Lidewij Edelkoort, co-founders WHF
Toby Clark, fashion designer
Victor Sonna, artist
Rachel Cohen, founder, of Common Threads Project
Padmini Govind, director, Tharangini
Maki Teshima, textile artist
Madame Tricot, psychiatrist & artist
Arne & Carlos, knitwear designers
SPEAKERS
Arne & Carlos
Norwegians Arne Nerjordet and Carlos Zachrisson are highly regarded fashion designers, textile artists, YouTubers and authors. Based 170 kilometres north of Oslo, Norway, in the mountainous region known as Valdres, they are best known for their original, colourful and visually striking designs, as well as their knitwear and their books. Their work is highly influenced by their Scandinavian background and everyday life in rural Norway. They work under their artist name ARNE & CARLOS, established in 2001.In 2010, ARNE & CARLOS’ first knitting book, Julekuler (55 Christmas Balls to Knit), became an immediate Norwegian best-seller. It consequently went on to become a best-selling book in North America, Europe and Asia. Today, ARNE & CARLOS have published ten books which are available in Norwegian, English, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The two Scandinavian designers have collaborated with many prestigious international brands, including Urban Outfitters (2009) and high-end cult Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons (2008). Today, the duo designs for and works closely with Rowan and Regia yarns. They have also written ten books, nine of which are available in 15 languages
Rachel Cohen
Rachel Cohen is the founder and director of The Common Threads Project whose model is rooted in a neuroscientific and socio-cultural understanding of trauma, revives an ancient practice found in diverse contexts: women come together to sew their stories onto cloth, to disclose the unspeakable atrocities they have experienced and to support one another. Common Threads Project integrates this tradition with best practices from trauma-informed therapy, bodywork, and psycho-education. The organization’s clinical partners, under its supervision, form therapy groups of 12 to 15 women who have experienced SGBV. These women then undergo a 6-month treatment process which involves the creation of a story cloth, as well as traditional trauma therapy interventions. The women’s sewing circle provides mutual support and safety and enables the multi-dimensional work of trauma recovery.
Victor Sonna
War & Conflict is the theme of Refresh Amsterdam #2. For centuries, the Dutch city served as a refuge for many. Amsterdam has likewise contributed to war and oppression in various places throughout the world as well. As a result, its residents reflect a rich diversity. Yet many people still carry their experiences of war with them, also in Amsterdam. Visual artist Victor Somna will take us on a quick guided tour of his installation at the exhibition. He graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven and St. Joost School of Art & Design in 2008 and now lives and works in the Netherlands. His artistic practice is formed and informed by his genealogy, negotiating between his homeland Cameroon and the Netherlands, constantly occupied with the struggle of holding onto his African roots on the one hand, and integrating a European home on the other. The experience of being in-between cultures is alive in Sonna’s work, which is often born from tensions arising between cultures and styles, resulting in artworks that de-familiarise and test the boundaries.
Madame Tricot (Dominique Kaehler Schweizer)
Madame Tricot grew up in Paris in a family of designers. Torn between art and science, she studied medicine and art history at the École du Louvre. For 40 years she has practiced psychiatry as Dominique Kaehler Schweizer MD in Wil (St. Gallen), Switzerland. As a diversion to medical practice, she discovered and perfected knitting as an art form. Madame Tricot loves to push boundaries, all the while never breaking them. She loves humour and kitsch, the macabre, and the interestingly ambiguous. She specializes in 3D objects, particularly perishable goods – in more or less fresh condition. As a medical doctor, the line between life and death has always gripped her. She finds the knitting of food particularly appealing, especially meat, which hangs persistently on the edge of life and decay. Her work has been seen in several museum exhibitions in Switzerland. As Madame Tricot says, "Knitting art is the guarantee of inner peace and happiness,” illustrating how knitting is an important mode of therapy for pain and trauma.
www.madametricot.ch
Padmini Govind
Padmini Govind runs Tharangini Studios in Bangalore. Founded by Padmini’s mother, Lakshmi Srivathsa, Tharangini’s block printing legacy stretches back to the 1960s. After Lakshmi studied art in New Delhi, she established a wood block library, which grew from one to a collection of thousands. From the very beginning, Tharangini has only used high-quality, organically certified dyes. Maintaining a low waste, women-owned business is at the heart of what the studio does; an ethical, sustainable and eco-friendly philosophy that makes it unique. From the beginning, Lakshmi was clear that she wanted a community of artisans to benefit from fair wages and profit sharing. With a mission to pass on precious hand working skills throughout generations, the studio solidifies its work by partnering with the Women’s Welfare Board. This includes conducting free training classes for women in the use and preparation of natural dyes. To date, Tharangini has also mentored several non-profits and charitable organisations. Their most recent is the sustained partnership with the Asha Foundation for Autism, providing an alternative stream of income for the organisation and training specially-abled artisans in block printing techniques.
Maki Teshima
Maki Teshima is a botanical dye textile artist. Born and raised in Japan, she studied botanical drawing, painting and printmaking at Corcoran College of Art in Washingto DC before learning natural dyeing techniques at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Textile Art Center, and private studios in Kyoto, Japan. In early 2021, she relocated to Denver, Colorado where she actively organises natural dyeing workshops to share her passion. Her workshops are conducted in unique venues like cafes, hair salons, flower shops, and compost sites, in addition to renowned institutions such as the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Denver Botanic Gardens. Maki's Musubi project is a collective knot art installation consisting of more than a thousand of colourful naturally dyed fabric knots flowing surface the fence along alameda avenue between South Marion Street Parkway and South Lafayette Street in Denver. The installation is a visible reminder of our connectedness to each other adding a calming, healing effect open to all passing by.
Toby Clark
Toby Clark is a designer, poet, gentle climate activist, and fashion philosopher of sorts… Growing up in a rural village, surrounded by green hills and mountain tops of North Wales, Toby held an unlikely ambition to become a fashion designer. As a young boy, he learned to handknit, making peggy squares with wool bales that arrived from the family sheep station in New Zealand, which his mother hand-spun on a spinning wheel. Later, while studying fashion at Bournemouth College of Art & Design, Toby instigated a collaboration on Uniforms with photography student Wolfgang Tillmans, before continuing his studies at the Royal College of Art, graduating with an MA in Fashion Menswear. Toby has since won Welsh Fashion Designer of The Year, run his namesake license in Japan, and been featured on the BBC’s Clothes Show with 8 million viewers. Toby spent 12 years at Margaret Howell, helping establish the menswear collection and develop the brand's international profile, before co-founding Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, manufacturing selvage indigo denim ecologically. In recent years Toby has undertaken consultancy projects for Toogood and Caramel, among other artistic and style-driven clothing brands. During the economic slowdown, anchored by the global pandemic and finding himself locked down on Waiheke Island in New Zealand, Toby’s ecological concerns around the fashion industry’s throwaway culture and desire for excess and newness inspired a personal manifesto, Same Clothes Everyday. This, Toby approached in a purist fashion, wearing just one set of clothes for 407 days. On his return to London, Toby became a co-founder of Heartfelt Repairs Co., a brand with a mission to empower people to repair clothing across the British Isles. Toby is currently developing a healing perfume concept with Robertet in France to help bring comfort to a world increasingly saturated with eco-anxiety. Toby continues to write poetry and create mandalas as part of a cathartic healing process for his well-being and to quietly bring attention to the war on the environment. As he says, "In a noisy world of digital overload, often the quietest elements found in nature resonate the loudest."