One hundred and fifteen years ago, female garment workers marched through New York City’s Lower East Side, protesting inhumane working conditions and demanding women’s suffrage. One hundred and thirteen years ago, International Women’s Day was officially observed for the first time. Today, Spanish luxury fashion house Loewe launched the Women in Craft campaign, a new initiative to honor women around the world. The goal of the campaign is to work in close collaboration with women who are pioneers in their field to highlight and draw focus to women in the arts around the globe. 

The campaign is entirely virtual, making it accessible to women in every corner of the world. Using the hashtag #WomeninCraft, the three artists who are working in partnership with the Loewe Foundation will each introduce three women in the arts that they admire. Founded in 1988, the mission of the Loewe Foundation is to place a spotlight on “creativity, educational programs, and to safeguard heritage in the fields of poetry, dance, photography, art, and craft.” For this campaign specifically, they are utilizing the world wide web to highlight women pioneering the world of craft. The three female artists Loewe has chosen to partner with for this campaign, Hyeyoung Cho, Celia Pym, and Patricia Urquiola, are already stars in their own right, and the artists they have chosen to highlight are definitely ones to watch.

Artist, consultant, and curator Hyeyoung Cho has been a partner with Loewe since 2017- partnering with the Loewe Craft Prize as the Asian promoter, and joining the Expert Panel for the Loewe Craft Prize in 2020.

Cho’s first nominee for the campaign is Dayhe Jeong, a Korean artist who studied sculpture before developing her craft with traditional fiber arts, specifically horse hair. Cho’s second artist nominee is Caroline Broadhead, a British multidisciplinary  artist specializing in furniture, jewelry, and textile installations that explore the relationships between bodies and objects. Ann Hamilton, Cho’s third nominee, is a visual artist from America specializing in performance collaborations and installations that “enact intimacy, tactility, and social history on a vast scale.”

London-based textile artist Celia Pym is the second artist working with Loewe gor this campaign. Pym’s work focuses on the ideas of damage and repair within the field of textile art. Pym was shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize in 2017, and has been working with the foundation ever since.

Pym’s first artist nominee is British textile artist Freddie Robins. Robins challenges the idea of knitting being a dull or benign activity through her subversive textile art. Swedish mixed media jeweler Lina Peterson is Pym’s second nominee. Peterson uses nontraditional materials such as wood to create brightly colored, engaging works. Pym’s third nominee for this campaign is Rachael Matthews, a teacher and textile artist who has produced research and writing that have significantly impacted the world of contemporary textile art, specifically knitting. 

Spanish architect, art director, and industrial designer Patricia Urquiola is the third artist working with Loewe on this campaign, Urquiola has previously served as a jury member for the Loewe Craft Prize.

Her first artist nominee is Paola Pivi, an Italian multimedia artist who challenges the unexpected through enigmatic and colorful works. Dutch furniture and product designer Linde Freya Tangelder is Urquiola’s second nominee. Destroyers/Builders, the design studio founded by Tangelder, combines sculptural desture , tactile surfaces, and startling materials. Bethan Laura Wood, a British multidisciplinary designer, is the third nominee from Urquiola. Wood renders mundane objects fantastical, and melds together the artisanal with investigations into sustainability through a lens of mass consumption.

Loewe is also encouraging the nominees to highlight other female artists they admire, and those nominees to nominate their own recommendations, and so on. The campaign goes live on March 8th, and can be found using the hashtag #WomeninCraft.