| Abstract: | This essay analyzes the international discourses and practices of yarn bombing—affixing knitted and crocheted works on public objects. Yarn bombing has recently become a nearly universally celebrated form of street art. The authors argue that acclaim for yarn bombing fashions an aesthetic regime that situates guerrilla needlework as an exceptional contribution to the urban landscape, while simultaneously policing alternate expressions of public art. By examining how yarn bombing's privileged style is related to modalities of gender, race, class, and capital, the authors supplement scholarly understandings of the politics of exceptionalism by highlighting the sovereign work of aesthetics. |
