The Nordic Textile Takeover
Scandinavia House, in partnership with New York Textile Month, is pleased to present the third iteration of NORDIC TEXTILE TAKEOVER, an exhibition, workshop series, and artist talks highlighting contemporary Nordic Textiles, coinciding with NY Textile Month in New York City. Featuring an exhibition in the Scandinavia House gallery, the program includes artist talks, a reception, and hands-on workshops.
THE COLD STITCH is a Nordic textile collaboration project co-curated by Ragna Froda (ISL/US), Director of New York Textile Month, and Emily Stoddart (CA), manager of exhibitions and community programs at Scandinavia House, New York.
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.
Featured Artists include:
Margarethe Aanestad (Norway)Valgerdur Bergsdottir (Iceland)Ellen Dynebrynk (Sweden)Ragna Froda (Iceland)Heidi Hankaniemi (Finland)Ingunn Fjóla IngÞórsdóttir (Iceland)Lee Jensen (Denmark)Andrea Magdalena Jonsdottir (Iceland)John Raustein (Norway)Randi Samsonsen (Faroe Islands)Sunna Sigfridardottir (Iceland)Nora Martine Hjelle Strand (Norway)Thorunn Elisabet Sveinsdottir (Iceland)Josabet Green Werkmeister (Sweden)Mette Winkelmann (Denmark)Kiyoshi Yamamoto (Norway)
Program Schedule
Exhibition - NORDIC TEXTILE TAKEOVER
On View - From Friday, September 4th to Wednesday, September 16
Tuesday to Saturday 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Wednesday 12:00 PM - 7:00 PM
No registration required
Walk & Talk with the curator - Saturday, September 5
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
The Cold Stitch Exhibition: Walk & Talk with the Curator Ragna Froda, director of New York Textile Month
Artist Talks & Opening Reception - Saturday, September 12
Artist Talks
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Nora Martine Hjelle Strand, Ingunn Fjóla IngÞórsdóttir, Thorunn Elisabet Sveinsdottir
Curator Walkthrough with Ragna Froda
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Opening Celebration
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Please join us on Saturday, September 12 for a program and opening reception for The Cold Stitch. An introduction by Emily Stoddart, Co-Curator of The Cold Stitch and Manager of Exhibitions and Community Programs at Scandinavia House, will be followed by artist talks by Nora Martine Hjelle Strand, Thorunn Elisabet Sveinsdottir, and Ingunn Fjóla IngÞórsdóttir, all of whom are presenting work in this year’s exhibition. Following the talks, Ragna Froda, Co-curator of The Cold Stitch and Founder of New York Textile Month, will lead a Curatorial Walkthrough of the galleries. An opening reception beginning at 4pm will round out the afternoon.
Workshops
September 9, 13 and 16 Learn more here
Tuesday, September 8th 5:30 PM: Basket Weaving with Lelia Bacchi
Sunday, September 13th12–4 PM: Hand stitching workshop with Thorunn Elisabet Sveinsdottir, Nora Martine Hjelle Strand, and Andrea Magdalena Jónsdóttir
Wednesday, September 16th3-6 PM: Artist Talk and Workshop with Heidi Hankaniemi6-7 PM: Curator Walkthrough with Ragna Froda
Artist talk and workshop event with Heidi Hankaniemi
Wednesday, September 16th
Margarethe Aanestad (Norway)
Margrethe Aanestad (1974), based in NYC, born in Stavanger, Norway. Educated at Rogaland Art College and University of Stavanger. Previous exhibitions include Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; Scandinavia House, NYC; Dimensions Variable, Miami; Yi Gallery, NYC; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, NYC; Open Source Gallery, NYC, in addition to multiple art institutions and museums in her native Norway. Aanestad´s works are included in private collections internationally, and public commissions include Stavanger New University Hospital Art Collection; University of Stavanger Art Collection; NYU Clive Davis Institute, NYC; Shine Portrait Studio, Newark, NJ; City of Stavanger Art Collection, Norway.
Valgerdur Bergsdottir (Iceland)
Ellen Dynebrynk (Sweden)
Ellen Dynebrink is a textile artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Working primarily with patchwork, she explores the relationship between textiles, images, and perception through works that translate digitally manipulated photographs into textile compositions. Her practice investigates the shifts that occur as images move between digital and textile media, where the material qualities and inherent constraints of patchwork reshape the image. Dynebrink holds an MFA in Textile Art from HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
Ragna Froda(Iceland)
Heidi Hankaniemi (Finland)
Ingunn Fjóla IngÞórsdóttir (Iceland)
Lee Jensen (Denmark)
Lee Jensen is a Danish textile artist who lives and works between Queens, New York and Copenhagen, Denmark. She creates abstract quilts and hand-sewn 3D textile pieces. Her work is rooted in her experience of place, seasonality, and memory, drawing from a life-long connection to sewing and textiles. She uses reclaimed textiles in her work and often sews and quilts by hand - a slow and meditative process. Lee is a recipient of the Queens Art Fund (QAF) 2024 New Work Grant distributed by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and she was also awarded participation in NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (2023-24). She has exhibited nationally and across NYC. Lee’s work has been featured in Queens Chronicle and Hyperallergic.
Andrea Magdalena Jonsdottir (Iceland)
Andrea Magdalena Jónsdóttir is a visual artist based in Reykjavík, Iceland. Her medium is textile and in particular hand embroidery. Her work explores situations where something is not at its right place, or something is missing but at the same time it appears familiar in the context of the setting. In recent work, Andrea works with her own memory notes, found text and mending. For her, working with thread offers tactile connection with the subject, in a slow but mindful process. Andrea has a BA degree in Anthropology, she studied visual art and design at the Iceland University of the Arts and holds an MA degree in Art Education from the same university. She has worked as an education and mediation specialist at the Reykjavík Art Museum and currently she teaches visual art at Fjölbrautaskólinn in Breiðholt, collage in Reykjavík, Iceland.
John Raustein (Norway)
John K. Raustein (b. 1972, Stavanger, Norway) is an Oslo-based textile artist. His practice investigates textile tradition materially, technically, and conceptually through slow, repetitive processes of sewing, folding, and assembling. Working with textile as body, language, time, and space, he creates installations and sculptural works that explore perception, memory, and recognition. His practice also engages with queer identity, invisibility, privilege, and resistance.
Randi Samsonsen (Faroe Islands)
"The french artist Pierre Soulages once said: “It is what I do that teaches me what I am looking for”. I strongly relate to these words. In my work I strive to become wiser and challenged as an artist and a human. My artistic approach is especially within the textile media. What engages me are all the processes while transforming thread in to form, surface and colour. I want to investigate the possibilities and I want to create a connection between the object, the craft and the viewer. Primarily I work sculpturally in the textile media. "
Sunna Sigfridardottir (Iceland)
Nora Martine Hjelle Strand (Norway)
Nora Martine is a Norwegian artist based in Bergen, Norway. Her practice centers on processing memories and emotions through physical actions. This is the starting point for autobiographical textile works built through repetitive, time-consuming techniques such as weaving and hand-quilting. She is interested in how we connect as human beings, and how experiences shape the way we live, a theme she explores both directly through text, and indirectly through colour and imagery. Every work begins with the personal. The finished piece becomes a physical trace of the internal process behind it: every thread holds a thought, every stitch a memory.
Thorunn Elisabet Sveinsdottir (Iceland)
Thorunn is an Artist and Costume_Set Designer from Reykjavik, Iceland.
As an artist she has given several solo exhibitions as well as group exhibitions. She is a member of The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists. Thorunn Elisabet has been an active set and costume designer in Icelandic theatre and films for more than four decades and has won the most prodigious awards of excellence for her work. She is a member of The Icelandic Actors and Drama Guild. Two books about Thorunn Elisabet have been published:
“I Love Being Alive – A testimony of a unique Icelandic artist.”
“She Is My Sweetheart For 50 Years”
Josabet Green Werkmeister (Sweden)
Mette Winkelmann (Denmark)
Kiyoshi Yamamoto (Norway)
"Born in Brazil to Japanese parents, Kiyoshi Yamamoto is an artist and Associate Professor at the University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD). Based in Bergen, Norway, he holds a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and has studied at Escola de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro and Central Saint Martins in London.
Working across textile, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance, Yamamoto explores colour as a material language connected to identity, heritage, belonging, and social experience. His practice combines material research with processes such as textile printing, dyeing, and three-dimensional construction, often bringing individual works together into larger sensory and spatial compositions.
Recent exhibitions include MUNCH, Oslo; Stavanger Art Museum; the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, Poland; and the Norwegian Textile Industry Museum in Salhus. His work is represented in public and institutional collections including KODE Art Museums in Bergen, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum in Trondheim, the Norwegian Embassy in Brasília, and the Office of the Prime Minister of Norway.
Yamamoto has realised several public art commissions in Norway, including works for Norges Bank (the Central Bank of Norway), Oslo District Court (Oslo tinghus), St. Olav’s Hospital, the University of Bergen, and Tromsø University Hospital."