Floral entanglements: Frida Hansen’s weaving and gardening practices
The flower garden was a great source of inspiration for Frida Hansen (1855–1931) throughout her life. This PhD thesis looks closer at her weaving and gardening practices, and it asks if these creative activities can be understood as ecocultural practices, that reveal stories about relations between humans and nature.
As a central figure of the 1890s Norwegian weaving renaissance, and one of Scandinavia’s most prominent Art Nouveau artists, Frida Hansen embraced the renewed interest in crafts and floral decoration of the European fin de siècle. Her love of flowers inspired her artistic endeavors, and was significant throughout her life. In her early adulthood, she created a magnificent garden complex surrounding her family's estate in Stavanger, and she later saw her garden dream revived in her woven tapestries, particularly in the transparent portieres created in her own "open weaving" technique. The vegetal realm also helped shape the material properties of her weavings; they had rich colour combinations which Hansen developed by using traditional plant dye recipes gathered from old farmer's wives in Jæren and Ryfylke in Southwest Norway.
Considering the fondness for handicrafts and textile arts seen in both our own time of increased environmental awareness and in Hansen’s time of intensified industrialization, this project asks how Hansen’s weaving and gardening practices bring about new perspectives on the properties of textile arts and its connections to the complex intertwined systems of nature. In dialogue with contemporary theories on gender, ecology, materiality, and textiles, it takes a closer look at weaving and gardening as creative, domestic activities and analyzes the materials, techniques, natural elements, and cultural relations involved in these processes. The project aims to draw attention to the stories that Hansen’s weavings can tell us about human-nature relationships, and to the environmental aspects of her artistic practice.
