Anna-Maria Saar, the performance Repairing the Tights, from the series Women´s Works

An image of an assumed female doing handicrafts. She mends or spins or cards the wool and seems to have plenty of time on her hands. The presentation of her always has a bit of educational nature, whether she is placed in old photos, in paintings, in the middle of domestic life. Because this image is so repetitive, it has shaped my perception that my value as a woman lies in the work I do. 

For three working days I sit in Knapp-Carlsson sewing and interior accessories shop and mend stockings. It is emphasizing the imbalance between the time-consuming hidden work in relation to the low cost materials of the broken items. The performance remains haunting as an image.

Anna-Maria Saar

Opening hours:

Thursday–Friday 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
Saturday 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Knapp-Carlsson is today Sweden’s largest and most well-stocked shop for sewing and interior design accessories. The store is located on Kyrkogatan 34 in central Gothenburg. The shop was founded in 1910 by Albert Carlsson and was then called Carlssons Sybehörsaffär. In 1918, the shop moved to its current location in Kyrkogatan. In 1945, the shop already had a large stock of buttons, which were stored in small boxes stacked on top of each other. This soon became unmanageable, so the premises were rebuilt and equipped with the large wooden shelves, the glass counter and a rack with 100 sample maps of buttons. In 1947, the shop changed its name to Knapp-Carlsson.