Svenska Quiltakademin /  Quilt Academy of Sweden

_{The selected artist of Art´n Fiber® 2026}  

The statement of the selection group/jury

As artist-in-residence in our fifth Art´n Fibre residency 2026, we are delighted to welcome textile artist

Kandice Kardell from Portugal!

Kardell works primarily with fiber materials from the plant kingdom. In her latest works, she uses seaweed and experiments with its potential for dyeing. In her confident and plain form, influences from her upbringing in the barren, beautifully monumental surroundings of the state of Arizona, USA, can be discerned.

Kardell intends to develop the use of seaweed further in her art, as in symbiosis with the expanded function of a traditional quilt - as a protection, a memorial object, and a kind of tender, body-close transition between life and death (cf. "burial blanket").

During her residency, Kardell looks forward to getting acquainted with Swedish flora. In clear harmony with her way of bringing together ecologies in her works, she wants to further examine art-specific contexts between textile expressions, people, and place. Kardell will be giving an artist talk at Uppsala Art Museum and a workshop in the residency studio on the cyanotype technique, including a variety of materials and colour elements. We have a lot to look forward to.

For the selection group:

Katriina Flensburg, Runner/owner of the residency

The selection group:

Eira Ekenstaf, Region Uppsala

Anna Holmbom, Uppsala Municipal

Katriina Flensburg Quilt Academy of Sweden

And a few additional words...

The residency is celebrating its fifth year. As the initiator and organiser of the annual event, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to all the applicants throughout the years. It is your focused efforts and creative talents that have shaped the residency. Your interest, craftsmanship, and determination have been the foundation for its existence and growth. The impressive flow of modern fiber artistry signals the strength and promise of the field. It also backs up the motivational factors for my initiating the residency: The flow, skills and confidence in today´s artistic expressions of fiber art, the shared frustration among many of the artists when it comes to the lack of exhibition opportunities in our common art establishments, and finally, the conviction that our modern expressions within the field not only deserve but ought to have equal generous and frequent presentations than any other field of art. - And this is not despite, but because of the the fact that the origins of our applied materials and methods often lie in the everyday hardships and household work of our female ancestors in time.

For the fifth annual Art´n Fiber residency,

Katriina Flensburg

Svenska Quiltakademin