showing several art projects for Roman Arts Festival, “Il Lusso Essenziale.” The event purposes an inspirational concept to participants: “The rediscovery of the extraordinary nature of everyday life.”[crochet starts at .58 seconds]
Magda Sayeg, founder of the original knit graffiti crew Knitta Please, works to redefine a craft that has been relegated to the stuffy attic of people’s brains and dismissed by a limited vision for knitting’s purpose, its function, its practitioners. Sayeg’s work repositions this granny pastime in public spaces, streets formerly dominated by a hard, masculine public art culture. The fuzzy tags invoke entirely different connotations, antagonizing expectations and initiating dialogue about community-driven art and intersections between art and craft.
When Knitta Please first began tagging in 2005, yarnbombing was the collective’s response to the mass-produced. By inserting handmade art in a landscape of concrete and steel, they were cheekily adding warmth to our urban fixtures. Knit graffiti reengages us with our environment: the parking meters, buses, bike racks, lamp posts, car antennas, columns, statues, exposed plumbing, all of the furniture in our urban world that goes unnoticed every day. And of course, Knitta makes the streets prettier along the way.
Knitta Please is now based in Austin, Texas.
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