Artist and textile designer Ýrúrarí has redefined the principle and practice of creative upcycling. Her ideal medium? Our old and neglected sweaters. Whether ripped, stained, or simply too drab, the knits that Ýrúrarí tactfully rehabilitates transform into extraordinary pieces of wearable art–– each one utterly individual and irreplicable.
Ýrúrarí is the creative pseudonym of Ýr Jóhannsdóttir, an Icelandic artist whose offbeat creations have been attracting widespread international attention since her emergence in the Reykjavík art scene after graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 2017.
These days, her pieces can be found on display in various museums around the world, including the Museum of International Folk Art in New Mexico and the Textiel Museum in the Netherlands. Ýrúrarí’s work has also been featured in Vogue, and prominent celebrities, like Miley Cyrus, have commissioned custom-made, wearable Ýrúrarí pieces.
The Icelandic artist’s sweaters are widely recognized for their vibrancy and humor. In her workshop, rips and tears are transformed into knitted mouths, with tongues that cascade whimsically along the fabric. Some of her designs are even interactive.
In one piece, which is playfully named “the winking sweater,” big droopy eyelids with dramatic spindly eyelashes hang down the front of the sweater. Peeking under these added appendages, one finds knitted eyeballs stitched onto the sweater itself. The garment fluctuates as the wearer is free to conceal or reveal these eyes. In another piece, the “greedy and lazy” sweater, Ýrúrarí has transformed the entire neckline into a mouth that seems to gobble up the wearer.
Her art plays with the human body, engaging both the body of the wearer and the body parts that are stitched onto the sweater itself. Attaining human features like mouths and eyeballs, each sweater develops an identity and personality of its own.
In the end, these pieces seem more like living organisms than they do articles of clothing. The wearing of these sweaters inevitably becomes a theatrical act.
Ýrúrarí’s recent projects have involved an increasing focus on sustainability, with an emphasis on the importance of repurposing used knits. For example, she recently partnered with the Icelandic Red Cross to create an initiative called “Sweater Sauce,” which targets, specifically, the stained sweaters that have been donated to the organization.
Playfully alluding to the most common takeout snack in Iceland (a hot dog with everything on it), Ýrúrarí repurposed these sweaters by adding hot dog inspired embellishments. One sweater in the collection is splattered with vibrant yellow, red, and green squiggles that are reminiscent of ketchup, mustard, and relish. Another sweater is studded with protruding knitted hot dogs all down the right sleeve.
Ýrúrarí’s work stands in rebellion to the manufacturable replicability that characterizes fast-fashion. Her art, instead, is slow. Each piece requires many hours of intimate focus.
Her website reads, “Ýrúrarí raises questions on our absurd consumption habits of textiles and tries out new ways of making unwanted clothes last longer as one of a kind art and design pieces.”
Importantly, Ýrúrarí has also made an effort to educate others on the process of creative mending. She has held creative mending workshops at the Museum of Design and Applied Art in Iceland, where she is currently in residency. At these workshops, anyone can come to receive hands-on instruction and advice on how to upcycle their damaged or neglected knits.
Similarly, Ýrúrarí created the Sleik-zine, a manual that contains knitting patterns and advice on how to mend sweaters with her characteristic mouth and tongue embellishments and other designs.
All images in this article are courtesy of Ýrúrarí.
