Johanna Ulfsak

Johanna Ulfsak (b. 1987) is a textile artist and designer whose practice focuses on material research and the history of weaving techniques, combining methods of traditional craft and contemporary art. Johanna Ulfsak has created numerous textile installations as well as individual pieces and unique series of craft objects.

Ulfsak first presented her now well-known loom-created paintings shaped like flying saucers in her series “Save As” (2018). The images she placed on the round forms resemble idyllic scenes from toile de Jouy, created in 18th-century France. However, instead of depicting leisure in the countryside, Ulfsak reminds the viewer that the textile industry still exploits cheap labour.

Ulfsak’s work “Old Scar” (2020) consists of a wool, horsehair, and silk yarn fabric depicting simplified human figures engaged in a power struggle. As a further development of painted fabric stretched on hospital screens, Ulfsak created “Soft Copies” (2020), which consists of two 9 × 2 metre sections, hand-woven and roughly stitched together, and stretched between volleyball posts. The woven net depicts slightly abstracted, strange-looking, larger-than-life babies floating in the air. With this work, the artist highlights widespread attitudes towards motherhood: expectations of how women should handle their emotions, children as a taboo, and anti-abortion stances. Drawing on the experience of motherhood while also critiquing consumer society, Ulfsak combined online CAPTCHA security images with characters from the cartoon Paw Patrol in her series “Captcha If You Can” (2023). She has stated that, as a symbol of consumer society, Paw Patrol inevitably enters the everyday lives of parents, capturing children’s attention and becoming a shaping factor in their childhood.

In terms of spatial practice, Ulfsak’s more exceptional works include “Spider Woman” (2022), which depicts a traveller crossing the gap between two-dimensional textile images and three-dimensional installation art. Another standout work is “Making Things” (2022), in which earthly and heavenly objects—clouds, sieves, and nets—are elevated to hang from the ceiling like cumulus clouds. The work brings together weaving, wool teasing, and braiding, displaying references to Estonian craft heritage destined for oblivion: maple strips, braided goatskin, hand-spun wool, and lambswool. In Ulfsak’s work, it is important to notice and value the idea that craft can provide access to deeper intuitive knowledge. Working from this perspective, she has not limited herself to working solely with linen fabrics. In preparation for her 2024 solo exhibition “Guiding Threads” at Draakon Gallery, Ulfsak went through all stages of fabric-making—from growing, pulling, and processing flax to weaving the fabric itself. An artist who undertakes such thorough material research in order to gain deep understanding goes well beyond the realm of handicraft. With the work “Composition” (2024), exhibited at the same exhibition, Ulfsak explored the ways textiles have been approached in art and cultural history. The work, consisting of nine modules depicting mass-produced fabrics, elevates them to the status of jewels through their intricate methods of production.

In 2025, Ulfsak created the costume design for Sinna Virtanen’s performance “Arakhne” at Espoo Theatre in Finland. In addition to designing the costumes, she taught three of the actors how to weave on a loom. In Greek mythology, Arachne was a mortal and skilled weaver who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena in a fit of rage.

Johanna Ulfsak has also directed the short film “Old Piano” (2024), which follows artist Kris Lemsalu’s adventures in different corners of the world. The film is a surreal mockumentary that presents a distorted life story of an artist who resembles Lemsalu but is not her.