Fanglu Lin wins the 2021 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize

Textile artist Fanglu Lin has scooped the 2021 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize with her monumental installation, She (2016), made using a tie-dye technique practiced by the Bai minority group in China for more than 1,000 years.

It took Lin three months to make the six-metre-long sculpture – one of 30 works shortlisted for the prize. The Beijing-based artist learnt the tie-dying process from makers in Zoucheng Village, Yunnan Province, where she spent almost a year researching the tradition, practicing with local experts and working out how to interpret their skills through her own artistic lens. ‘When I first saw this technique, with its rich texture and primitive power, I knew this was what I had been looking for,’ she says. ‘The highlight of the process is the tying process – through sewing, thread-drawing and knotting the cloth, plain fabric can be transformed into something astonishing.’

She is a textured, undulating work, spanning three metres wide. To create it, the artist knotted, stitched, folded and pleated numerous pieces of white cotton cloth to form intricate patterns that come together in a massive, cloud-like form.

The sculpture pays tribute to the women who have used these labour-intensive skills for so long. ‘Constant knotting, binding and other specific behaviours unite rationality and sensibility, mind and body,’ Lin says. ‘The individuals, the body, human nature, and expressions of the will and ego are reflected in the actions of hands and the activities of the body.’

Winning the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize, she says, marks a turning point in her career. ‘I have a new project in Guizhou, China, to study the Dong minority group’s bright, hand-made cloth,’ she says. ‘This award will encourage me to continue to do what I do and strengthen my confidence.’

Lin was picked as the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize winner by a jury that included Olivier Gabet, director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, art historian and journalist Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, lacquer artist and 2019 Loewe Craft Prize winner Genta Ishizuka, and designers Naoto Fukasawa and Patricia Urquiola. 'This work stands out not only because of its monumentality, but also because this is adding something to our world that would deeply miss it if it did not exist,' Gabet says. 'What impresses me is Fanglu Lin's sense of strength and the monumental, an artistic mastery far beyond just the fact of mastering a craft.'

The list of 30 finalists was narrowed down from 2,500 submissions from more than 10 countries – the most international spread since the prize was launched by LOEWE’s creative director Jonathan Anderson in 2016. 'There is no doubt that the best of their art entered the competition,' Gabet says. 'They can be of very different backgrounds, crafts, techniques, cultures and generations, but they all embody the high quality of craft requested. They reflect the beautiful eclecticism of craft today, from monumentality to intimacy – embracing the idea that craft is certainly one of the most expressive and dynamic field of artistic creation today.'

The jury also gave two other artists special mentions: Chilean artist David Corvalán, whose work in copper wire and resin Desértico II (2019) references his home in the Atacama Desert and the damage caused by its mining industry, and Japan’s Takayuki Sakiyama, whose ceramic work, Chōtō:Listening to the Waves, is a inspired by the power of the sea. 'The entries the jury decided to honour this year echo the spirit of the world as it is today,' Gabet adds.

The finalists for the award were initially announced in 2020, but both the Loewe Craft Prize exhibition and the judging process were postponed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The works were to be displayed at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, but because of lockdown restrictions, it is taking place online instead at craftprize2021.loewe.com. Viewers can visit a digital version of the museum, and ‘walk’ around to look at the 360-degree recreations of all the works.

Alongside this, the Loewe Foundation has launched The Room, a digital platform where potential collectors can explore the work of all past and present Loewe prize nominees. To help encourage collecting and commissioning, the artists themselves can offer their own contact details and that of their galleries.