art vs craft

Disclaimer: i'm not a native english speaker so there's probably words and concepts that don't really translate from spanish, so sorry in advance :)

A small text about my thoughts on textile art 

A couple of years ago i went to a three month long free workshop about textile art and it's techniques, and it was there that i first learned about my favorite artist so far, Anni Albers. I remember watching her work on the screen of my phone and only trying to imagine how it looked in real life, and at the same time my teacher saying that we can't really dictate what separates an artist from an artisan. If you look Anni Albers up, you'll realize it was thanks to her than textile artist started getting more recognition. However, it's weird for me to find textile artists out in the wild without having to use the word artisan as their description. Things like weavings, embroirdery or patch work gets recognized as a product more than a piece of art —except from the community that makes them, of course— and often are under appreciated by the general public.

Maybe i'm generalizing based on my country's view, but i think my point still stands. I used to think about crochet and imagine an old lady trying to sell handmade clothing on a random market, instead of a cool piece of art hanging on a museum. Even if i knew it is really difficult to weave, crochet, etc, for some reason it was still just work for me, rather than a passion. Thinking back on it, you can really see the love, thought and technique displayed on a textile piece. So, what makes us differentiate it from art? 

I've thought about it a lot, and i think about it everytime i see a cool artist on instagram showing their work. The first thing i think about is how textile art has always been a "woman-ly" thing, instead of the "manly" thing that was traditional art. Let's go back to Anni Albers. When she studied on the famous Bauhaus, she realized that the only workshop available for woman was, you guessed it, weaving, and decided to go for it, even if she never tried it before. Here's a direct quote from her from her writing "Material as Metaphor": "To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over" 

So, what does that tell us? Women were —and still are— not considered real artist, especially if they used any other material that weren't oil paints. And even the few women that were recognized, were considered special cases. Anni Albers, and her teacher Gunta Stölzl, were the minority on the Bauhaus, even if they were exceptional artist. Their names aren't as well known as Kandinsky, right? That narrative still translates to the current time, seeing that the artist we often learn about are always male, making an exception for women like Frida Khalo, Georgia O'keeffe, or the icon that was Artemisia Gentileschi. And still, the three i had to discover by myself instead of learning about them in school.

Subconsciously making us think that textile art is a craft, and by consequense not as cool or worth it (not that crafts are any less austonding than art) makes us separate an artist from an artisan, and makes us think that an artist holds more prestige, while an artisan is a simple worker, producing stuff that sells. And thanks to the wonder that is mass production, their work gets less and less valued by people, for not being sure if an object is really hand made or made in a factory. 

But really, who are we to dictate what separates them? why can't we view crafts and textile work as art instead of something just useful? Every time i see any type of handmade thing i ask myself these questions, and i try to see whats really behind the work. There doesn't have to be exceptions to what an artist is,  anything made by humans can be a piece of art, even if it doesn't present itself on a traditional material.