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Folk Arts and Vernacular Creativity Working Group

The emergence of nation-states and national markets in the 19th and early 20th centuries sparked elite and popular interest in pre-industrial vernacular culture, a process that gave rise to the concept of “folk art.” From the outset, the concept has been a site of interpretation and projection. Various actors, both inside and outside the original cultural contexts, have refracted selected expressions through their own lenses, attributing them with symbolic and semantic surplus meaning. The 20th century further politicized this process. Regimes instrumentalized “the folk” for ideological purposes, while modernization’s social and economic transformations altered or erased the very communities that were its original bearers. Consequently, vernacular culture shifted from being a set of stable, localized practices to a dynamic field of negotiation and conflict, with its representation actively shaped by diverse agents through political, economic, cultural, and identity-based frameworks.

The SIEF Folk Arts and Vernacular Creativity Working Group seeks to move beyond scholarly traditions and popular notions that romanticize, aestheticize, or fetishize “folk art” as a static Tradition. Instead, we aim to investigate historical and contemporary practices of vernacular creativity (encompassing storytelling, performance, material, visual, and digital forms) through critical concepts such as transitionality, passages, intersectionality, reception histories, and interpretive layers. We aim to create an open forum to explore how these forms are studied, theorized, and practiced today. Our work aims to disentangle the domains in which art operates by engaging factors including ethnicity, race, class, gender, marginalization, migrant or minority status, situated within regional, national, colonial, post-colonial, and global/glocal contexts.

Materiality, Agency, and Community – The contemporary relevance of folk arts often lies less in static objects than in the process of making. Immersive, collaborative acts of creation – be it crafting, building, landscaping, music or dance – foster human connection and collective experience, generating social and spiritual bonds. This highlights the creative power of cultural community, emphasizing experiential knowledge and specific aesthetics. Here, agency is embedded in creative practice: the process of making, the reclaiming “expropriated” traditions and active cultural engagement becomes a strategy for negotiating belonging, asserting identity, and enacting resilience. Grassroots initiatives transform arts into identity proclamation and political activism, voicing community knowledge with often nature-conscious responsibility.

“Folk Art” in the Digital and Globalized Age – Vernacular creativity now extends dynamically into digital spaces. Social media, memes, and digital archives create hybrid forms that blend material and virtual expression, challenging earlier definitions of folk creativity, while engaging core themes of identity and transmission. Simultaneously, folk art is deeply implicated in global economic flows – commercialization, tourism, and creative industries constantly adapt and market tradition. This duality raises critical questions about authenticity, commodification, cultural sovereignty, heritagization and ecological sustainability.

Folk Art as Dialogue – Ultimately, 21st-century „folk art” is best understood as a continuous dialogue: – between past and present, object and action, individual, community and institutions, the local and the global. It is neither purely conservative nor merely decorative, it is a vital, adaptive force for navigating change, expressing identity, and creating meaning. Whether through the intimate act of wearing traditional adornments as personal statements, the collective ritual of communal building, or the digital circulation of vernacular motifs, folk art remains a powerful medium for human creativity and connection. To study it is to engage with the very processes through which culture is continuously made and remade – in institutions and markets, in homes, communities, and networks and in the enduring textures of everyday life.

Key Objectives & Themes

Samples of Thematic Areas of Focus

Materiality, Agency & Gender: Creative practice, power dynamics, and gendered dimensions in craft, costume, and performance.

Aesthetics of the Everyday: Vernacular creativity in domestic space, interior decoration, gardening, and personal collections.

Art, Identity & Politics: Use of traditional symbols, clothing, and forms in demonstrations and identity projects.

Digital Vernaculars – Memes, social media, digital photography, and online communities as sites of folk creativity.

Sustainability & Cultural Economy: Craft revival, circular economies, tourism, and the commodification of tradition.

Performance & Intangible Heritage: Contemporary practices in performative genres and ritual.

Museum & Heritage Practice – Curating, safeguarding, and representing vernacular art in institutional contexts.

Contemporary Arts & Locality, Vernacularity – Placing vernacular creativity within a broader sense of contemporary art scene.

Board:

Jonas Frykman (Lund University, Sweden) / co-chair
Ágnes Fülemile (Research Institute of Ethnology, ELTE University, Hungary) / co-chair
László Koppány Csáji (Research Institute of Art Theory and Methodology, Hungary), / co-chair and secretary
Mare Kõiva (Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia), board member;
Giuseppe Maielo (University of Finance and Administration, Czech Republic) / board member;

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