Soft Score, 2022
hand crochet wool net, basketball rim
By replacing the standardized basketball net with an exaggerated handmade object, Soft Score questions the gendered hierarchies embedded in both labor and culture. Activities and materials associated with women—crocheting, decoration, and domestic craft—are often perceived as ornamental or amateur, while traditionally masculine domains such as sport are coded as professional, competitive, and culturally significant.
By replacing the standardized basketball net with an exaggerated handmade object, Soft Score questions the gendered hierarchies embedded in both labor and culture. Activities and materials associated with women—crocheting, decoration, and domestic craft—are often perceived as ornamental or amateur, while traditionally masculine domains such as sport are coded as professional, competitive, and culturally significant.
The oversized crochet net interrupts this opposition. It inserts a decorative, soft, and time-intensive craft into the architecture of a sports arena, exaggerating its presence until it can no longer be dismissed as mere embellishment. In doing so, the work challenges the historical separation between craft and fine art, asking why certain forms of making are celebrated as cultural production while others remain undervalued because of their association with femininity and domesticity.
