Innovative textile artist, Nina Falk is from Stockholm but is now based in Edinburgh. Here, she guides us through her work process:

My work often breaks the boundaries between fashion, textiles and art – moving away from the labels that we are often given. This is something that I find really interesting – the labels within art are something that I often come across when I exhibit my work.

Even though I have shown my work at places such at Moscow Museum of Modern Art to New Designers in London I always find myself justifying what I do. Is it art or is it design?

Rend Birth 2011

Rend it 2011

Studying ‘Fashion and Tailoring’ in Stockholm, ‘Textiles’ at Norwich University of the Arts in England, ‘Textiles art’ at Osaka Seikei University Faculty of the Arts in Japan and a Masters in ‘Contemporary Art Theory’ has influenced my work and my process.

I am currently living in Edinburgh where I am running a Contemporary Textile Collective with a group called Kalopsia. Kalopsia brings attention to the field and sees textiles as a distinct artistic practice which opens up the debate on “What is Textiles”. I see Textiles as a social, historical, and cultural artefact and as an instrument to show emotions, experiences and thoughts.

Playing hard to get 2012

Alteration 2012

The way I work and the tools I use, the process and the thinking comes from my past in the ballet. I started dancing when I was three or four years old and I was quickly drawn into the world of ‘perfection’ and the strive to push oneself. You can always be better; be the best! You are brought up thinking ‘what is the point otherwise?’ and without having this mentality, you fail. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, having been a dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School and done pliés for, what felt like 100 years, that I realised that it wasn’t for me. I quit a few years later and the only thing that stayed with me was the constant realisation of the pushing – the perfection. I have never found that perfection and I am now moving towards the fragmentations of it. Whatever form my work comes in, it ends up with destruction. The more stains and the more fragmentation I can create, the more satisfied I get. I am a perfectionist, but I know that perfection doesn’t exist.

Alteration – lip 2012

Being diagnosed with MS later came to influence my process and this now has a key impact on my ideas about alterations as it is a constant uncontrollable force, constantly changing my behaviour and my body.

I have tried to capture this in my work and video installations from (Un)Conscious Deformation. The rather painful process of stitching into my own skin is an important aspect. The preparation before penetrating a sewing needle through my skin was filled with adrenaline. I stitched myself in front of a mirror and sometimes with a few people around me. The mirror was there to push me – I saw myself changing and I wanted more – it was very difficult to stop. When was I done? Is there such a thing as a final stitch? When is the time to stop? You always forget the pain and it is difficult to look at yourself in a mirror and say ‘done’. There is always something that you can alter.

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