My name is Karina Nøkleby Presttun,
a Norwegian artist working with textile
sculpture and discarded materials. My work often begins with a spark — a moment of recognition when I encounter materials that seem “difficult,” overlooked, or useless to others. Right now, I’m drawn to plane shavings, orange peels, and a type of rope I spin from textile waste. Believe it or not, all three carry surprising potential.

I’ve been working experimentally with textile sculpture since 2014. My early works were large-scale textile collages made from discarded fabrics, laser-cut and layered. Over time, my focus shifted from surface to object. In 2018, I began laminating plane shavings with textile, building a material one shaving at a time. Zippers became a modular system for assembling sculptural constellations.

I’m inspired by how we relate to each other, to our bodies and our genders, to movement and to sound. Music, especially electronic and experimental tracks, plays a vital role in my process. Some sounds give me visual impulses such as shapes, textures and movements, which I translate into sculptural gestures. I don’t try to recreate what I hear, but I let rhythm and distortion guide my decisions. I’m interested in how sound can become form and how form can speak without words.

Portrait by Stockholm Craft Week/Sebastian Waldenby.

The video is of my piece “Sapphire with zippers, (Rotating Night Sky version) filmed at my exhibition at Christinegaard. Click to see more images.