art ⇆ craft

Categorizations, definitions, and boundaries can help navigate a complex world, but they can also lead to exclusions, divisions, and hierarchies. Art history, too, is full of hierarchies that, to varying degrees, hidden or visible, continue to have an impact today: tradition and modernity, art and craft, fine art and applied art, 'high art world' and 'low art world,' European and non-European art.

This exhibition also begins with a classical delineation. The title suggests a relationship between art and craft, but the two terms are separated. This can be interpreted as a pause or even as a stutter, as a stuttering relationship between two areas that must constantly renegotiate their connection. The emblem for this exhibition, developed by modern temperament Berlin, reflects these exchange relationships and shifts in positions over centuries within the hierarchies of art and craft, craft and art.

The exhibition asks how a productive dialogue between art and craft could look today and places both in a broader societal context. It mediates between contemporary art, craft, and new technologies, traces cultural transfers across national borders, explores intermediate areas, transition zones, and allows for opaque spaces. The significance and appreciation of craftsmanship as an essential part of material culture, cultural identity, and community are considered in relation to social and economic conditions and production logics in a globalized world.