Not  so  Sad  Anymore

The Not So Sad Anymore trophy, commissioned for the Françoise van den Bosch Award, responds to Lin Cheung’s Slightly Sad brooch, a reflection on Brexit’s political impact.
Inspired by this sense of loss, I initiated a social collaboration by civilians, gathering 27 star-shaped garment buttons from citizens of all stable EU countries as a gesture of support and protest. Each button was accompanied by handwritten letters for the awarded artist, presented at the Relevance of Crafts Symposium (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam).

The trophy’s design engages with the historical transformation of garment buttons into badges, highlighting their shift from functional fasteners to symbols of identity and resistance. As artifacts of cultural classification, craftsmanship, and industrialization, buttons embody socio-political narratives despite their often-overlooked ordinariness.

The project is extended through a collaborative exchange with the awarded artist, in which all participants received the piece by post as a two-dimensional postcard, a tangible trace of their shared contribution. In this redistribution, the work remains in “circulation”, belonging not to an individual but to all who shaped it.

/ brooch - buttons: plastic, epoxy, various metals, shell, mother of pearl, flax thread, remanium. /

/ second image by Lin Cheung /