Knitting has become sexy. Even crochet and weaving are back in vogue. A new generation has taken up the mantle of a long tradition of home crafts and made it their own. It’s not unusual to see a Millennial knitting away in a café, on a bus or in the park. What once was the bastion of 1950s housewives or your nan has been reclaimed by feminism and a raft of young left-leaning women. Yarn, a documentary by Una Lorenzen, highlights four talented artists using wool as their medium.
Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldsdottir creates graffiti using yarn. The Icelander using it as an expression of protest, linking her work with feminism and social activism. Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam has taken her art out of the galleries, creating children’s play areas suspended like spider webs. Olek crochets at excessive speeds, covering models in bodysuits and parading them around the streets. Tilde Bjorfors, artistic director of Copenhagen’s Cirkus Cirkor, is making Knit Show, where artists and acrobats use an elaborate yarn-inspired set in their performance.
Yarn is a colourful and bright documentary, highlighting the work of four very talented. Whilst it’s an engaging and entertaining documentary, the strands are never interweaved and there’s no central thread running through it. The feminism and activism angles are never explored fully. The inclusion of someone reciting Barbara Kingsolver’s ode to yarn is also very an annoying. However, Yarn is a fun and vibrant film which makes the case for knitting and crochet to be recognised as serious art forms.
Yarn is out in cinemas from 9 October.
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