MADE IN: Crafts — Design Narratives exhibition in Austria

MADE IN: Crafts — Design Narratives exhibition is a result of a two-year project by the six partnering organizations within a larger initiative – the MADE IN platform. 

Within the final exhibition of the project, which had its premiere in February 2020 in Zagreb, the activities realized since the end of 2018 are presented in two sections: the “Crafts Archive” with 41 craftspeople from the region presented through photo documentation and stories; and eight “Crafts — Design Narratives” realized through collaborations of more than 30 craftspeople and more than 40 designers from all over Europe, which raise the questions about the nature of production in our contemporary world. 

The premiere of the exhibition was presented in Zagreb (Museum of Arts and Crafts – MUO) in February, after which the scheduled presentation in Ljubljana was postponed because of the current pandemic situation. Finally, it got exhibited at Slovenia’s Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in May of this year. The exhibition continues its journey to Andelsbuch, Austria, to the exhibition space of Werkraum Bregenzerwald, where it will be on display from October 2nd 2020 until January 23rd 2021.

At the same time, the project partners released two important publications. Design and Crafts in Dialogue: Critical Reader is a digital publication that collects interviews, reflections and transcripts of conversation that took place throughout the project, especially within three seminars held in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia respectively. Renown curators, designers and authors from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Austria and many other countries have participated. The reader is available for free download at the following link. All the while, the main project publication is the 500-page project/exhibition catalog, with a goal of presenting all of the activities of the two-year process to the wider audience, and featuring professional photo documentation of all crafts workshops and commissioned projects. The catalog design as well as the exhibition setup itself were designed by the members of the OAZA Studio, one of the partners on the project.

The topics that are connected with the project will be discussed within one of the panel discussions at this year’s Mikser festival in Serbia, on October 9th.

MADE IN: Crafts-Design Narratives is a two-year collaborative project involving six organizations dealing with different aspects of crafts and design research and production: Studio Oaza and Museum of Arts and Crafts from Zagreb (Croatia), Werkraum Bregenzerwald from Andelsbuch (Austria), Museum of Architecture and Design from Ljubljana (Slovenia), and the creative hub Nova Iskra and Mikser organization from Belgrade (Serbia). Since October 2018, many professional meetings, mapping exercises, design residencies and workshops have been held in all four countries, bringing together professional designers, craftspeople, design students, scholars and other experts related to the fields. 

The MADE IN project is co-founded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, as well as by the Ministries of Culture of Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia, KulturaNova Foundation, City of Zagreb, Embassy of The Netherlands in Croatia and Slovenia’s Centre for Creativity.