What is yarn bombing ?

What is yarn bombing ?

Yarn bombing, is a practice that takes over city streets by covering street furniture with works made of knitted or crocheted yarn. It is a true urban art that can be compared to the world of graffiti (drawing and painting). Thus, this art can be expressed on benches, buildings, stairs, bridges, but also on natural landscape elements such as tree trunks, sculptures present in public places or in gardens. The main objectives of yarn bombing are to humanize urban spaces and to provoke the reaction of passers-by. Indeed, nothing looks more like a bench than another bench ! The yarn bombing comes therefore to dress places and public furniture by making them less impersonal.

But in fact, where does yarn bombing come from ? 

Yarn bombing was democratized at the beginning of our century, on the American continent. The emblematic figure of this new artistic movement is an American, Magda Sayeg, who had the idea to cover the door handle of her haberdashery in Houston (USA), one morning in 2005. The trend was exported much later in France. Thus, it was in Angers, in May 2012, on the occasion of the urban art festival Artaq, that the first large urban knitting work was launched.

Some yarn bombing actions in France : 

• The city of Angers proposed to its inhabitants to contribute, by knitting, to a yarn bombing action in the city as part of the urban art festival Artaq in May 2012. On this occasion, Magda Sayeg covered the Confluences bridge with knitting.

• In Mulhouse, Patricia Vest, president of the association of shopkeepers of the "Heart of Mulhouse" and Anne-Marie Ambiehl, visual artist, have launched a 3 months operation in March, April and May 2015 inviting anyone practicing (or not) knitting, crocheting or sewing to come and contribute individually or collectively to a large-scale artistic work consisting in dressing the City Center with threads and colors.

•  In Evry, the Aunettes neighborhood house organized, from May to July 2015, a collective knit-graffiti action ("knit-graffiti") in collaboration with Christine Chazot (speaker), children from a school, volunteers from the neighborhood and participants from ADAPT (association for the social and professional integration of disabled people). This action, of international scope thanks to donations of yarns and crocheted and knitted works coming from foreign donors, allowed to dress several dozens of urban objects (posts, fences, grids, trees,...).

• In Lille, in October 2013, as part of the ID Creatives exhibition, a group of volunteers from the Recyclage Textile 240 association took up the challenge of knitting the urban furniture around Lille Grand Palais.

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