Gender, Craft, and the Avant-Gardes: Reimagining Artistic Practices in Transcultural Modernisms

Dear Colleagues,

In this Special Issue of the Arts journal, we welcome contributions that critically examine 20th-century artistic practices from the theoretical intersection of craft, transcultural, and gender studies. Our aim is to rethink the role of crafts in transcultural modernism by considering them beyond canonical hierarchies and from an intersectional gender perspective.

Throughout the 20th-century, artistic avant-gardes challenged established canons by including craft practices and grounding their artistic production in imagined "traditional," "folk," or "ancestral" modes of making. European avant-garde movements used crafts to subvert the academic norms, breaking boundaries between art and daily life by creating Expressionist textiles and furniture, Orphist cloths, and Dada puppets, for example. In non-Western contexts, artistic experimentation with vernacular craft techniques and local materials was also employed as means of political resistance against industrial capitalism and colonial rule. Examples range from Mexican Indigenismo to the arts of the Swadeshi movement in India.

While avant-gardes articulated Eurocentric and male-dominated narratives, they also opened spaces for critique, particularly through non-Western, feminist, and queer interventions. The classification of crafts as design objects, ethnological artifacts, or handicrafts is largely linked to patriarchal structures that divide male-associated designs and artistic conception from female-connoted craft execution and embodiment. Feminist and queer artists have often used this bias to subvert it; using craft practices has gained a subversive character, as described by Rozsika Parker in The Subversive Stitch (1984). Building on her groundbreaking work on crafts and gendered arts, the aim of this Special Issue is to explore the artistic and subversive potential of handicrafts throughout the 20th century within a worlded and transcultural context. We acknowledge that the historical Western division of the arts into fine art and crafts played a significant role in the marginalization of women’s labor and dismissal of non-Western artistic practices alike. Nevertheless, crafts have also served as a medium and instrument for gender subversion, political resistance, and artistic experimentation within transcultural modernisms.

We are particularly interested in research that restores the agency of women and gender nonconforming individuals within transcultural and entangled modernisms, as well as in research that examines the role of crafts from an intersectional gender perspective. Through the investigation of gender, crafts, and transcultural modernism, we seek to critically question traditional avant-garde terminologies and conceptions. We welcome contributions that address the following themes, among others:

• Craft as a means or tool of aesthetic, political, or epistemological resistance and reimagination.
• Feminist and queer artistic practices involving crafts; marginalized female figures who worked in crafts.
• Case studies of textile craft practices and needlework: arpilleras in Chile, huipiles zapatistas in Mexico, quiltmaking, Kantha in Bengal, etc.
• Case studies of other craft practices: pottery, woodcarving, metalwork, paper crafts, etc.
• Gendered canon de/constructions.
• Critical “avant-garde” perspectives that include craft positions.
• Gendered artistic practices and their relational positions in transcultural art history
• Theoretical discussions with an intersectional, gender-critical approach toward crafts and transculturations.
• The material, economic, and ecological dimensions of crafts, as well as topics related to extractivism and sovereignty.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution and a short list of bibliographic references. Please send your abstract and information to the Guest Editors Miriam Oesterreich (m.oesterreich@udk-berlin.de) and Sol Izquierdo de la Viña (sol.izquierdo@cchs.csic.es) by February 28, 2026. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purpose of ensuring their proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Decisions on manuscript acceptance will be communicated by March 31, 2026.

Full manuscripts are due on September 30, 2026, and will undergo double-blind peer review.

Prof. Dr. Miriam Oesterreich
Dr. Sol Izquierdo de la Viña
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• avant-garde
• transculturality
• global modernisms
• gender
• feminism
• queer art history
• crafts
• material culture
• critical modernism studies
• critical art history