Looping Emotions in Textile – soft sculpture workshop
From sensation to form: creating textile objects for hugging.
21-24 OCT – 3 to 4 -days workshop for 2 groups + final day 25 OCT with presentation (applications for group A are still open, for group B you can join the waiting list)
Group A WORKSHOPS FOR YOUNG ADULTS (18-25 years old)
21 OCT / 16.00 – 19.00
22 OCT / 16.00 – 17.00
23 OCT / 16.00 – 18.00
24 OCT / 14.00 – 16.00
Group B WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS (25+ years old) – registration to waiting list
22 OCT / 17.30 – 20.30
23 OCT / 18.30 – 20.30
24 OCT / 16.30 – 19.30
place: Kunstnernes Hus
address: Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo
Description
What happens when we let the body lead the creative process?
This workshop with artist Patrycja Mastej invites participants into a space of attention, trust, and creative freedom. Rather than starting with an idea or a plan, we begin with sensation: breathing, noticing what is happening in the body, and allowing shapes to emerge from what we feel.
Working with fabric, needle, thread, texture, and touch, participants will create soft textile forms – from relief-like compositions to small three-dimensional “sculptures for hugging.” The process combines collage, intuitive making, and movement inspired by Butoh dance, encouraging the hand, eye, and body to guide the work before analytical thinking takes over.
Workshop highlights
- Create soft textile sculptures using fabric, thread, texture, and found soft materials.
- Work from sensation rather than a fixed plan, exploring how bodily awareness and emotion can guide artistic choices.
- Experiment with intuitive collage and three-dimensional textile forms, allowing the material itself to suggest new directions.
- Discover flow through making, drawing inspiration from the freedom and bodily attentiveness of Butoh dance.
Explore questions such as:
- How can a sensation or emotion become a shape?
- What happens when we allow the body, rather than the mind, to guide the creative process?
- How can touch, softness, and texture influence the way we experience an artwork?
- Can making something with our hands become a form of listening to ourselves?
Fragments of plush toys may also become part of the pieces, introducing tenderness, memory, play, and the idea of embracing parts of ourselves that are often overlooked or pushed aside.
No previous artistic experience is required. The workshop is about curiosity, presence, experimentation, and allowing the material to lead. Each participant will leave with a personal textile artwork — a soft object created through their own intuitive process.
About the Artist
Patrycja Mastej is a Polish artist working across painting, sculptural objects, drawing, installation, and interactive exhibition design. The body and emotional consciousness are central to her practice.
Her work is strongly influenced by Butoh dance, which she has practiced for fifteen years. Through plush objects, paintings, drawings, and installations, she explores bodily awareness and creative flow, treating art-making as a form of meditation in movement.
She is an assistant professor at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, where she leads the Immersive Space Design studio. Since 2020, together with psychologist Magdalena Skowrońska, she has been developing Exposition on Color, a series of interactive installations at the Wrocław Contemporary Museum inviting visitors to experience color through multiple senses. The latest chapter is Indigo (2026).