I am a multidisciplinary artist based in London and Madrid. My work is influenced by theatre, dream, surrealism, cultural myth and fairytale, always guided by a profound passion for colour and light, whilst also reflecting a love of visualising and interpreting text.
I grew up in a very European environment, brought up bilingually, like so many Londoners. Much of my childhood was spent travelling between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. My Swedish grandmother was a Stockholm furrier and my Maltese grandmother made lace. I loved the contrasting cultures, languages, climates and colours.
Studying English, Drama and Art at A level, it was difficult to decide between art school – theatre design, or acting and directing. I chose the latter but always loved working with designers.
I started my career in the theatre after graduating with a BA in Performing Arts and co-founding Tell Tale Theatre, specialising in Commedia dell’ Arte, puppetry, circus and theatre-in-education, touring the UK and France. Following my degree, I also trained to teach English as Foreign Language. My mother, a teacher and linguist, had taught me Swedish and instilled in me a love of languages. This led to translating, adapting and directing Scandinavian drama – Strindberg and Ibsen in particular. Whilst bringing up my family in Wales, I continued my career in EFL, in teaching, consultancy and life story, which eventually led to working abroad in Spain, Italy, India and South America.
Years later, and having brought up my two sons – now a musician and a journalist, I studied Life Story at post graduate level, and so began work on my mother’s life story, and it was then that I felt the need to return to the visual. My mother had recently and very sadly died. We had been very close and I kept finding her influencing and appearing in my work.
Once back in London, I studied Contemporary Collage at City Lit, and much enjoyed the exploration and juxtaposition of imagery, scale, style and content. During that time, I met the totally inspiring Louise Baldwin. On visiting the departmental exhibition, I was amazed by the variety and range of textile art. And it wasn’t long before I enrolled on her courses, constituting my first year of textile studies. I then went on to do Foundation Textiles at Morley College and following that, I was delighted to be accepted onto the Advanced Textiles course at City Lit.
This gave me a wonderful and very challenging opportunity to explore a huge range of techniques, and a chance to work more conceptually. It was then that I began to examine personal influences from my upbringing; the geographical differences, the light, the midnight sun of northern Sweden, the fairy tales, trolls, the snow and candle light, the infinite and myriad blues of Malta, the heat, sea and sky and the iconography of the dark and ancient churches. My early Nordic influences were Tove Jansson, Astrid Lindgren and John Bauer, followed by the female surrealists – particularly Hannah Höch, and much later, the daemons of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. I began to see characters and stories in my abstract pieces, which were to become the foundation for the Aurora Borealis series.
At the beginning of the course and before the pandemic, I continued my work abroad, between course dates, spending huge amounts of time on trains and in hotel rooms. Free embroidery was the perfect and most practical solution to making work on the road, sometimes even extending to dying fabric in the hotel bath! Once back in the studio, I used an embellisher fusing fabrics, silks and metallic threads, an almost magical process, to explore colour and texture. As with making felt, I love the relative unpredictability of the technique. I work intuitively, almost in an abstract way, guided by colour, texture and light.
Lucia Krona
Embarking on the Advanced Textiles course at The City Lit, I searched for an image or concept that could capture the essence of my Scandinavian and Mediterranean background – two very distinct cultures. I rediscovered a photograph taken by my mother of me as a young child, dressed up as Santa Lucia, a 3rd Century Italian saint, celebrated in Sweden on the winter solstice. She symbolises light and hope, even in the darkest of times. It was also an emotional response to the political changes of the last few years.
Using photography, collage and digital printing, I have played with colour and mark-making to find characters emerging in a somewhat pareidolic way.
Childwood / Förtrollad explores the influence of myth, dream and fairytale on my upbringing in London. Childwood is the enchanted wood of childhood, with its trolls, demons and magic. My background in theatre has inspired my deep love of the black box and black light theatre. I have used hand and machine embroidery to fuse velvets and silks to juxtapose colour, light and darkness, and with an embellisher I found a way to push light through to the surface.
Childwood, Aurora Borealis and the Lucia Krona series were exhibited at the Textiles 2020 group show at The Espacio Gallery, London, in December 2020.
Publications
I love to collaborate and working with text is always an exciting process. I have been fortunate enough to be commissioned for book illustrations by the publishers, Nueva Utopia and Ediciones Arcos, Madrid.
In the future I would also love to write and illustrate children’s books.
The Traveller’s Case
For some time I have been developing this series of tiny suitcases. It started during lockdown when I couldn’t travel or escape. Somewhat obsessed with the concept and practicalities of luggage, I found a way to distill the experience by making the tiniest suitcase; something so tiny it could never be useful, but it could contain a memory, or a moment.
These tiny cases float weightlessly, frozen in time. Full of holes, they contain within them the memories and moments of their journeys; tickets, maps, letters, people half remembered, places half forgotten. Captured in time until they can venture out to journey again. This work is dedicated to my mother who taught me how to travel, from a very early age.
‘To call up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment, we must have the will to dream… But… the past is fugitive, ever on the point of escaping…’
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (1896)
Constellations – Familiar and Far Away
This work marks the next chapter of my textile work following on from Childwood, Aurora Borealis and The Traveller’s Case. A parallel world of memory explored through colour, constellations and cut-outs.
These cut-out dresses exist in the liminal space between this world and the next. The pinpricks of light illuminate and enrich the darkness, connecting me with my European ancestors, through constellations familiar and far away.
This work is also a gentle reference to Family Constellations, the therapy that weaves the stories, beliefs and influences of our ancestors into the warp and weft of our own lives. The dresses have a life of their own.
The installation comprises embroidered and embellished velvet printed on wallpaper, and embroidered and collaged cut-outs.
Exhibitions
Worn, textiles2020, Espacio Gallery, London, October 2023
Fishy Tales (a collaborative project), Festival of Quilts, NEC Birmingham, August 2023
Stories in Stitch, textiles2020. Espacio Gallery, London, April 2022
The Traveller’s Case. 210 Window Gallery. Brixton, London, April 2021
Textiles 2020 ‘the show’- Group exhibition. Espacio Gallery. December 2020
Sewn Antidote. Contributed to a collaborative textile artwork on reflections to the first lockdown of the COVID pandemic conceived and stitched together by Lara Hailey. Accepted as part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s textile collection 2020
In Transition. City Lit Gallery. Feb-March 2020.
Construction Site. City Lit. Group show. July 2019
Cut! Morley College: Foundation Textiles, May 2018
Längta Hem. Swedish Church, London. Oct- Dec 2017.
Professional Education
Advanced Textiles. City Lit, London. 2018-2020
Textiles & Collage. City Lit, London. 2014-2017
Post Graduate Studies in Life Story. University of Glamorgan. 2005-2008
DIP TEFLA, Cheltenham. 1993
BA Honours. Performing Arts. Middlesex University.1983
Follow me on Instagram: @karinahaake
Website: www.karinahaake.com