In this essay art critic and writer Nicholas Norton reflects upon the blurring lines between fine art and crafts in the contemporary art scene in Norway. He looks at Ahmed Umar’s show Glowing Phalanges at Kunstnernes Hus (2023), Unweaving the Binary Code at Kunsthall Trondheim (2022) and Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzels exhibition at BO, On Lycanthropy, fabulation and weaving spells (2023). Norton examines the shows use of performativity and sound, and he arguments on how crafts is an increasingly elastic category, capable of merging different critical perspectives that are not simply beholden to traditions of making, and can be a way of “making” new perspectives on the world.

In this text, Sebastian Rusten looks at the ancient art of spruce root basket weaving to reflect upon his artistic practice, which relates and communicates with a non-human world through foraging and craft.