ABSTRACT
The display and its associated programming were conceived to work together, moving the audience’s focus between historic objects, the maker’s hand, and the care taken in the creation and life extension of singular, meaningfully crafted functional objects, to overarching concerns of environmental and social repair. Large countries are run by vocally racist, fascist, and hyper-nationalist leaders, and global economies are sustained by mass production and consumption. The act of repair is most often presented as a mundane task performed in the household or by the car mechanic, the shoe mender, or building maintenance person. Art and design projects highlighting repair mark a reactivated longing for authenticity and quality, and a revival of interest in narratives, experiences. In addition, increasingly widespread recognition of the environmental, social, and geopolitical issues engendered by our current throw-away society has cultivated renewed interest in repair, marked by scholarly research, new laws on the right to repair, repair cafés, the visible resurgence of the craft itself.
