Ohio State nav bar

Radical Imagination for Rural Realities: Sarah Craycraft Reports from the Field

October 27, 2020

Radical Imagination for Rural Realities: Sarah Craycraft Reports from the Field

Craycraft Rural Radical Imagination

PhD Candidate Sarah Craycraft co-curated a photographic exhibit (along with Elena Stoycheva) as part of her participation in a three-week artist's residency in Deleyna, Bulgaria titled "Radical Imagination for Rural Realities." During this residency, Sarah and Elena interviewed and photographed seven Deleyna residents and their handmade textile collections to create the exhibit Open Wardrobes, which explores the intergenerational connections to handiwork in Bulgarian villages. Their work depicts the process of unpacking and narrating collections of folk costumes, knitwear, embroidery, hand-woven fabrics, and everyday use items preserved and stowed away by multiple generations of women, and was accompanied by a story circle which invited the women of Deleyna to gather and shared memories connected to handiwork practices in the village. The artist's residency was hosted by a Sofia, Bulgaria-based NGO, Ideas Factory, and Sarah participated as part of her dissertation research about intergenerational connections to villages and rural revival in Bulgaria.