Sewing universes: Homo Faber, Homo Ludens
Exhibition
/
04 Nov 2025
-
08 Mar 2026
Published: 30.10.2025
Artesania Catalunya. Consorci de Comerç, Artesania i Moda de Catalunya
- Mail:
- ccam.artesania
gencat.cat - asanmartingencat.cat
- Phone:
- + 34 934674663
- +34 934674660
- Curator:
- Ricard Planas
- Management:
- Angie Sanmartín
The third edition of the Biennial of Contemporary (Art)esania, “Visions of Catalonia: Crafting Art”, reaffirms Catalonia as an international reference in the intersection between art and craftsmanship. The initiative, promoted by the Consortium of Commerce, Crafts and Fashion of Catalonia (CCAM), is curated by Ricard Planas Camps, art critic and cultural manager. The Biennial will begin on November 4 with a central exhibition at the Artesania Catalunya center. It will also have several international tours during the years 2025 and 2026.
Artist list
Cesc Abad, Mònica Campdepadrós, Virgínia Escudero, Ivan Forcadell, Galdón Jesús, Gonzalo Guzmán, Madola, Antoni Marquès, Edgar Massegú, Eva Mazana, Santi Moix, Cristina Márquez, O Tèxtil, Francesca Piñol, Quim i Txell, RibasFrosum, Francesc Ruiz, The Glass Apprentice, Eulàlia Valldosera, Vayreda Lab
The Catalan Crafts Centre of the Consortium of Commerce, Crafts and Fashion (CCAM) of the Generalitat hosts the exhibition “ Sewing universes: homo faber, homo ludens ”.
Under the motto "Sewing universes: homo faber, homo ludens", the Biennial seeks the maximum interrelation between Art (Creativity) and (Art)esania, highlighting the materials of artisanal crafts such as textiles, wood, ceramics, iron or glass, and their processes. Based on these elements, proposals are explored that incorporate concepts such as the circular economy, sustainability, environmental responsibility and creativity in all its areas.
Today's (art)esania is not just the prefigured image we have in our collective imagination, codified from antiquity to the 18th century. Human disruptions have gradually modified its perception, but the industrial revolution turned everything upside down. Despite this, the prestige of artisanal creation - the remoteness of the craft, the echo of the material worked with the hands - has survived to this day. Today, the return to (art)esania crafts reveals a drive for humanity, for materials that breathe nature, for crafts that root us in time and place, in identity and identities.
But the 21st century has added a new, radically disruptive vector: technology. A 3D ceramic printer seen at a fair is not just a technical curiosity, but a symbol. The (art)esan world expands and questions itself in the face of the machine, in the face of speed and digital mutation. This is one of the essential axes of our time. The other is the constant dialogue, always latent, between Art and Crafts with the same horizon: transcending the functional and opening the door to Creation, Creativity and Art in capital letters.
Sewing and unsewing borders
Our time demands that we go further: talk about circular economy, sustainability, climate emergency, creativity without codes or borders. It is at this point that the faber-ludens appears: the human being as creator, as manufacturer, but also as a player, capable of conceiving new worlds by playing with limits. This Biennial wants to tension the margins, make them dialogue and, if necessary, make them explode. Because what is interesting is precisely that which we do not know where it begins or where it ends. And it is at this point that we have made a selection of authors - basically artists who practice craftsmanship or surround themselves with excellent craftsmen (increasingly scarce) - who are often unclassifiable and strain the seams.
The essential elements used by all of them are not a cold enumeration, but living materials that become language: textiles that sew memory and fragility; wood, which carries the voice of the forest; ceramics, which is earth transformed into body and ritual; iron, which embodies hardness and resistance, and glass, which captures light and fragility. We are not talking about dead materials, but rather elements that breathe and become travel companions in the creative process. However, 21st century (art)craft has incorporated and hybridized materials of all kinds to tension structural limits, which also have a place in this Biennial.
References and genealogies
The relationship between art and (art)health is not new. Joan Miró knew how to listen to matter and transform it into universal signs. Antoni Tàpies made matter itself a language full of spirituality and criticism. Miquel Barceló and Eduardo Chillida also delved into ceramics as a material. In Latin America, creators such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica explored the sensorial dimension of the object; Doris Salcedo has worked on memory and pain through simple materials, with echoes of ancient crafts; Teresa Margolles converts remains and objects into collective memory. In Portugal, artists such as Helena Almeida, Joana Vasconcelos and Fernanda Fragateiro have reinvented the relationship between body, object and material, with a particularly incisive look at textiles and everyday life. All of them, from different languages and geographies, have woven a genealogy where art and craft, play and matter, merge and become confused.
An open invitation
This edition of the Biennial wants to be this: an open invitation to sew universes, to traverse the diffuse border between craft and art, between hand and machine, between ancestral memory and emerging technology. An invitation to think of ourselves as faber-ludens, as beings who manufacture by playing and who play by manufacturing. Sewing universes is, in short, a way of understanding that art and (art)esania are not opposites, but communicating vessels. And that in their dialogue, in their tension and in their fusion, the most fertile space appears: that of creation without limits.
/Ricard Planas, Curator.
>> Check out the complete catalogue here
Under the motto "Sewing universes: homo faber, homo ludens", the Biennial seeks the maximum interrelation between Art (Creativity) and (Art)esania, highlighting the materials of artisanal crafts such as textiles, wood, ceramics, iron or glass, and their processes. Based on these elements, proposals are explored that incorporate concepts such as the circular economy, sustainability, environmental responsibility and creativity in all its areas.
Today's (art)esania is not just the prefigured image we have in our collective imagination, codified from antiquity to the 18th century. Human disruptions have gradually modified its perception, but the industrial revolution turned everything upside down. Despite this, the prestige of artisanal creation - the remoteness of the craft, the echo of the material worked with the hands - has survived to this day. Today, the return to (art)esania crafts reveals a drive for humanity, for materials that breathe nature, for crafts that root us in time and place, in identity and identities.
But the 21st century has added a new, radically disruptive vector: technology. A 3D ceramic printer seen at a fair is not just a technical curiosity, but a symbol. The (art)esan world expands and questions itself in the face of the machine, in the face of speed and digital mutation. This is one of the essential axes of our time. The other is the constant dialogue, always latent, between Art and Crafts with the same horizon: transcending the functional and opening the door to Creation, Creativity and Art in capital letters.
Sewing and unsewing borders
Our time demands that we go further: talk about circular economy, sustainability, climate emergency, creativity without codes or borders. It is at this point that the faber-ludens appears: the human being as creator, as manufacturer, but also as a player, capable of conceiving new worlds by playing with limits. This Biennial wants to tension the margins, make them dialogue and, if necessary, make them explode. Because what is interesting is precisely that which we do not know where it begins or where it ends. And it is at this point that we have made a selection of authors - basically artists who practice craftsmanship or surround themselves with excellent craftsmen (increasingly scarce) - who are often unclassifiable and strain the seams.
The essential elements used by all of them are not a cold enumeration, but living materials that become language: textiles that sew memory and fragility; wood, which carries the voice of the forest; ceramics, which is earth transformed into body and ritual; iron, which embodies hardness and resistance, and glass, which captures light and fragility. We are not talking about dead materials, but rather elements that breathe and become travel companions in the creative process. However, 21st century (art)craft has incorporated and hybridized materials of all kinds to tension structural limits, which also have a place in this Biennial.
References and genealogies
The relationship between art and (art)health is not new. Joan Miró knew how to listen to matter and transform it into universal signs. Antoni Tàpies made matter itself a language full of spirituality and criticism. Miquel Barceló and Eduardo Chillida also delved into ceramics as a material. In Latin America, creators such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica explored the sensorial dimension of the object; Doris Salcedo has worked on memory and pain through simple materials, with echoes of ancient crafts; Teresa Margolles converts remains and objects into collective memory. In Portugal, artists such as Helena Almeida, Joana Vasconcelos and Fernanda Fragateiro have reinvented the relationship between body, object and material, with a particularly incisive look at textiles and everyday life. All of them, from different languages and geographies, have woven a genealogy where art and craft, play and matter, merge and become confused.
An open invitation
This edition of the Biennial wants to be this: an open invitation to sew universes, to traverse the diffuse border between craft and art, between hand and machine, between ancestral memory and emerging technology. An invitation to think of ourselves as faber-ludens, as beings who manufacture by playing and who play by manufacturing. Sewing universes is, in short, a way of understanding that art and (art)esania are not opposites, but communicating vessels. And that in their dialogue, in their tension and in their fusion, the most fertile space appears: that of creation without limits.
/Ricard Planas, Curator.
>> Check out the complete catalogue here
Artesania Catalunya. Consorci de Comerç, Artesania i Moda de Catalunya
- Mail:
- ccam.artesaniagencat.cat
- asanmartingencat.cat
- Phone:
- + 34 934674663
- +34 934674660
- Curator:
- Ricard Planas
- Management:
- Angie Sanmartín
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