From a local tradition coming out of a small historical world to a tradition involved in a vast queer-worlding of making,The Last Basket Makers from Risa refers to a lineage of artisans producing the enigmatic Hedared basket—from Lennart, the basket’s first ‘last maker’—to Lennart’s great-grandson, Fadhel Mourali. This is his report on an open-ended process of identifying and crafting the material of kinship.
Crafty, personal, and entangled with tradition, Fadhel’s research and own making share stories out of and surrounding the rural community of Risa—the former home of his great-grandfather. Here, a dialogical and productive patchwork unfolds, exploring tradition, evolution, and adaptation. This process—akin to queering—includes expected and unexpected entanglements of care and rooting.
Additional texts help put this process into perspective. Textile artist Raisa Kabir, author Tanya Harrod, lecturer Helena Hansson and curator Marcia Harvey Isaksson shed light on cross-cultural dynamics, queering, kinship and more.
‘Whilst I am vastly separated from the living conditions of my Swedish great-grandfather, growing up as a queer person with a mixed cultural heritage, in a working-class environment, the recurrent need to conform, find meaning and belonging has continued to colour my desire to make. Through my great-grandfather’s lived experience as an artisan, I have sought to decipher tradition in the context of my primary culture: the Swedish. Throughout this book, I have strived to explore its most dominant traits as it filters through a new type of lived experience: my own. Instead of the felt tensions between my multiple cultures being put against each other, they could merge as part of this storytelling. As the outward manifestation of an ever-evolving, internal contemplation, craft continues to be the process through which I make sense of the world—a process that continuously seeks to reflect the creation of a space in which to exist and belong.’ – Fadhel Mourali
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