Society is spinning out of control, moving at an accelerating pace. We rush to keep up, stress over rapidly changing fashion trends, and consume at unprecedented rates, only to discard items moments later. This thesis resists these trends and rejects the urge to follow the crowd.

Through a series of slow textile art and clothing projects, I explore the aesthetics of aversion. The process has been time-consuming, difficult, tangled, and at times boring. It has employed repetition and return as methods, using textiles and garments as materials, and drawing on emotions, memories, and habits as driving forces. These elements aim to forge new relationships with matter, people, and the Earth.

In everyday life, I seek to slow down the relentless push toward novelty. Rather than embracing the faster, easier path, these projects focus on the relational, tactile, and identity-building aspects of textiles and garment-wearing. My goal has been to resist solutions, to avoid quick fixes, and even to turn away from problems altogether. This thesis highlights and discusses many concepts related to the aesthetics of aversion.

The video piece is a continuation of meetings between three dyers Lotta Lundstedt, Sweden, Lidia Kostareva, Russia and Elina Härkönen, Finland. We met first time in Komi, Russia 2019 and started sharing our passion for plant dyes. Since then, we have been able to meet only online but have been able to collaborate through artistic work. Meeting in Material is our first artwork published in 2020 where we have examined dyeing as a cultural heritage by joining outcomes of our dyeing process together. In this second artwork, Meeting in Landscape we have concentrated on the poetic rhythm of the dyeing processes by bringing our three landscapes together. Our collaboration is ultimately about sharing and learning from each other’s processes and thoughts about dyeing and cultures in our neighbouring countries. Meeting in Landscape was exhibited together with Rae Mariz in the exhibition One of a kind, Utopia, Umeå, Sweden 2022.

Meeting in material is a joint natural dying and textile research project between Lotta Lundstedt, Sweden, Lidia Kostareva, Russia and Elina Härkönen, Finland. The project explores cultural heritage and slow processes through a patchworked art. The aim was to by shared knowledge about plants for dying and craft, raising awareness about how the physical, social and intellectual world are interconnected and interdependent. The patchwork works as a reflection of us, as persons, crafters and as women, it is a memorial of what has happened between us and we are all connected through the material. Meeting in material was exhibited together with Rae Mariz in the exhibition One of a kind, Utopia, Umeå, Sweden 2022.

It’s no coincidence that the shapes resemble iPhone covers. It’s a reflection on how much time is used reflexively picking one up and repetitively scrolling. Consuming fleeting digital content, at an ever-increasing pace. This was her experiment in deliberately reserving time to create tactile material objects. A conscious reprioritizing of one’s time as a rejection of the attention economy. One hundred instances of creating in defiance of assembly line productivity and rejoicing in inefficiency. In the performance of daily life, this is a colorful reminder that it’s within one’s power to set the pace, insist on the rhythm of the dance. Lotta selected flower petals and rusty nails, fruit skins and crushed roots and brought them to boil. She chose waste yarns and trinkets, collected while traveling or left behind when loved ones passed. Careful to only dye the amount she needed for the current weave, she added the material to the pot and left it to steep. During the time, she sawed out the shape of wood, drilled holes. Checked her brew to witness the surprise of the color the cottons and wools and linens took on. Recorded the results in her sketchbook. Mixed the paint color for the frames, allowed it to dry. Strung the nine strings. Then used the weaving techniques available to the form to see what took shape. The same repetitive process and the discovery in the variation. Each weave is a record of her morning, or afternoon, or late night. They encapsulate small worlds of nostalgia and personal relationships, like a photograph. They are one hundred moments in time, viewed here like sediments in rock. A timeline. A story for those who’ve been shown how to read it. Exhibition text by Rae Mariz

In fashion, repetition is linked to imitation: we see how our friends, partners, and people on social media are dressed, and we want to look the same. This has created endless loops of trends, wherein we constantly strive for the new. This striving has created both environmental and ethical problems in the manufacture and distribution of garments. By repeatedly knitting and reknitting a sweater, I want to explore time and temporality in making and wearing clothes. When we consciously repeat or return there is the possibility to pay attention to our behaviour in relation to consumption and how we spend our time, wear our clothes, and relate to the natural world. 

The video piece is a continuation of meetings between three dyers from Sweden, Russia and Finland. We met first time in Komi, Russia 2019 and started sharing our passion for plant dyes. Since then, we have been able to meet only online but have been able to collaborate through artistic work. Meeting in Material is our first artwork published in 2020 where we have examined dyeing as a cultural heritage by joining outcomes of our dyeing process together. In this second artwork, Meeting in Landscape we have concentrated on the poetic rhythm of the dyeing processes by bringing our three landscapes together. 

Our collaboration is ultimately about sharing and learning from each other’s processes and thoughts about dyeing and cultures in our neighbouring countries. 

Repetition is part of our everyday lives: it is all around us, in patterns, art, and habits like having a cup of tea or getting dressed each morning. Repetition, recurrence, and return are also fundamental in nature – there are shifts in the seasons and regular, rhythmic elements, such as the weather, that occur over and over again. In order to repeat you have to remember what you did last time, and memories are intimate and can be associated with personal relationships with objects or clothes; they are not written down but preserved in memories of lived events, which over time become mythologised. In fashion, repetition is linked to imitation: we see how our friends, partners, and people on social media are dressed, and we want to look the same. This has created endless loops of trends, wherein we constantly strive for the new. When we consciously repeat or return there is the possibility to pay attention to our behaviour in relation to consumption and how we spend our time, wear our clothes, and relate to the natural world.

This thesis has taken me on a journey which started with the world of repetition, where memories, habits, and nature are visited and revisited. The journey progressed through five destinations/projects at a slow pace: at each, textile art, craft and fashion were explored. Repetition, recurrence, and return were used as methods to explore time and timing in textile making with a focus on the tension and duality between the making and the made.