Anna Mlasowsky, new professor in craft, on creating an environment in which diversity and equality can thrive

Anna Mlasowsky is one of the leading female artists working with glass today and known for her experimental and boundary-crossing work with this material. She has a master's in sculpture from the University of Washington and a candidate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Design School. She has also studied at both Konstfack and Aalto University of Arts and Design.

Anna Mlasowsky has a well-articulated artistic international practice that centres around questions of sexual and cultural identity through craft practices, performance and science. She has produced several innovative installations and exhibitions at museums and galleries internationally. Her work can be found in museum collections such as The Corning Museum of Glass USA, The Toyama Museum of Art in Japan, The New York Museum of Art and Design and the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, Italy. She has also successfully led courses, and taught and supervised students on multiple levels at a number of different universities. Mlasowsky finds herself in critical dialogue with several discourses around sustainability, post-colonial and norm-critical perspectives that in a contemporary context expand the boundaries between different artistic practices and genres, a development that can be found both in students and on the international arts and crafts scene.

"As our society today is facing social, economical and political instability and division, greater than for the past thirty years, I ask myself how I can contribute to create the society that is needed to provide equality and diversity. Having taught I have seen how I can help students feel empowered by giving them confidence to face their own paths and express their own needs. In a world less than ideal, art when shared with others is a tool itself for education and activism, with the ability to generate change and understanding. Konstfack is an incubator for ideas that gives students the tool, hand skills and knowledge to become change makers and dreamers that our world needs. As an instructor, I provide critical content that challenges traditions and illuminates history from diverse perspectives. Teaching and being a student are not that different. Both are a process of unlearning as well as learning, and I look forward to joining my colleagues and the students at Konstfack in this collective process", says Anna Mlasowsky.