Walk & Talk with the Curator Ragna Froda, director of New York Textile Month

The Cold Stitch - Textile exhibition of 16 Nordic Artists

In the Nordic countries, stitching has long been more than decoration or domestic craft. It is a necessity, a form of storytelling, survival, memory, and care. In landscapes shaped by cold climates and long winters, textiles have become vessels of warmth, protection, repair, and continuity, carrying traces of everyday life and cultural identity across generations.

THE COLD STITCH brings together artists from across Scandinavia whose practices engage with textiles as both material and language. Through quilting, patchwork, collage, weaving, hand embroidery, sculptural textiles, and visible and invisible stitching, this exhibition explores how textile traditions have continued to evolve within contemporary art. The exhibition’s title refers both to the geography of the North, the relationship with textiles and the act of stitching itself.

A stitch repairs, connects, layers, and transforms. It binds fragments together while allowing histories, emotions, reflections on the political climate, and personal narratives to remain visible. Echoing this feature, many of the works in the exhibition embrace reuse and transformation, giving discarded fabrics, garments, yarns, and textile remnants new meaning through the artistic process.

THE COLD STITCH celebrates textile art as a living and evolving practice deeply rooted in the cultures of the North, where there is a strong tradition of working with textiles as an art form and where stitching continues to mend, preserve, and reimagine the world around us.

Work by Lee Jensen

Now in its third year, Ragna Fróða returns to curate an exhibition of Nordic artists at Scandinavia House for New York Textile Month. This year bringing together Artists from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

Ragna Fróða is an Icelandic artist, curator, and educator with a background in fashion and textile design, and has served as Festival Director of New York Textile Month since 2020. She is the recipient of numerous grants recognizing her work, her projects, and her contribution to the arts. Her practice centers on the process of making, working with color and texture, and drawing on the history and culture of symbols and patterns in textiles. With a strong passion for textiles, innovation, and craft, storytelling through hybrid layers of craft and technology forms the foundation of her work.

Early in her career, Ragna ran her own fashion and textile studio in Reykjavík. Over the past fifteen years she has lived between New York, Berlin, and Reykjavík, where she served as Head of Textiles at the Reykjavík School of Visual Arts. She is now based in New York, where she runs her studio practice and serves as Director of Edelkoort Inc. and New York Textile Month.