the craft district
>> location > amman, Jordan
>> year > > 2020
Amman Design Week’s Crafts District is dedicated to celebrating the social, performative and critical discourse of crafts. This celebration explores the whole process of making in a holistic environment through the empowerment of community, expression and creation, resulting in an immersive and sensory experience. “Craftivism” is an international movement that integrates crafts within a more complex process of empowerment and self expression through creativity. It is at once social, performative and expressive, and has become intertwined with different values like community, locality and sustainability. This exhibition extends beyond the object itself, to celebrate the process and story behind the object. To know how and where an object came into being makes us more invested in it.
The Craft Districts brings together an actively selected and diverse group of initiatives, institutions and individual makers and designers who highlight current global and local needs, skills and trends. Each maker that we chose presents a distinctive selection of products, coupled with their own unique stories. Within the temporary showrooms space within Raghadan Bus Terminal, we present varied exhibitions; some showcase conceptual pieces and installations about local craft and design that reflect on our shared histories. Others are the outcome of conversations between selected designers and local artisans that were challenged to re-examine traditional notions of material and technique.
Curatorial Note by Dina Haddadin
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Craft, which traditionally has been associated with community both in its creation and its distribution, is now situated within a capitalist system where mass production has become a commodity. While the craftsperson develops specific skills and rituals, engaging in the process of making is more importantly a form of self-expression.
Interview with the curator Dina Haddadin_ Amman Design Week 2016
