The Roses of Ties Method
Developed in 2022, the Roses of Ties Method has been implemented internationally by museums, universities, municipalities, refugee organisations, artists, and community groups. The method offers an accessible framework for dialogue, well-being, gender equality, peacebuilding, and cultural participation through collective making.
At the heart of the Roses of Ties Method is a symbolic response to gender inequality. An object traditionally associated with male identity, status, and authority is reimagined through women’s hands, stories, and creativity. By transforming neckties into roses, the method makes women’s experiences visible while creating opportunities for dialogue, well-being, collective memory, and social participation.
Donate Ties
Since 2022, the Artten Foundation has supported Ukrainian women and families through a curatorial practice that brings together art, craft, memory, and community – from weaving camouflage nets that continue to save lives in Ukraine to transforming donated neckties into symbolic roses.
During the Stockholm Sewing Festival, people travelled from across Sweden carrying family neckties. As each tie was transformed into a rose, stories of love, migration, loss, and hope were shared. Roses of Ties is more than a participatory art project. It is a curatorial and artistic methodology that transforms everyday objects into carriers of cultural heritage, connecting people across generations through shared memories and collective making.
WORN CLOSE TO THE HEART
The unique collection of handcrafted brooches offers healing both to the Ukrainian women who carefully transform donated neckties into roses for the men they love and long for, and to those who choose to wear them close to the heart.
Each rose has become a symbol of love, hope, and resilience. It is created while waiting for partners, husbands, fathers, and sons to return from war – often forever changed, sometimes missing limbs, but alive.
As an artist and a mother of two daughters, I have come to understand that love also changes. It finds new forms, new dimensions of care, strength, and hope.
Is this the future we are creating, or the future we must learn to live with? And if so, what objects from today will still speak of love and resilience 100 years from now?
What do we hold onto to?
Over time, fashion has faded into shades of grey. Roses of Ties seeks to bring color back to our wardrobes and to our lives. It speaks of kindness and hope in turbulent times, and for many people it becomes a way to fill emptiness with meaning and connection.
A symbol of patriarchal authority is reimagined through acts of feminist care, embodied memory, and shared ritual. Ties are transformed into tributes to the women who carry on – fragile yet strong, like roses.
Every rose is worn close to the heart. Every rose carries someone’s story.
War’s Unwomanly Face
When Swedish women donated neckties once worn by the men they loved and had lost, they asked for only one thing in return: a Rose of Tie to wear close to the heart.
Through the delicate act of transforming neckties into roses, Ukrainian women discovered that grief knows no borders, and neither does empathy. As Swedish companies and individuals continued donating neckties to the Roses of Ties project, the collection grew into a living testimony to our time – a time marked by war, displacement, resilience, and human solidarity.
The project extends beyond craft. Academic research and documentary films follow the hands and stories of the women behind each rose, revealing how collective making becomes a language of healing, dignity, and resistance.
One Rose of Ties each day
The integration of Ukrainian families into Swedish society unfolds through the shared language of craft. Ukrainian women create one Rose of Ties each day – a quiet ritual that has become their way of counting time, where every second matters.
Time becomes almost tangible: measured not in hours, but in stitches and breaths, in every fold, and in every Rose of Ties.
Roses of Ties is a living, polyphonic project. It is not a closed narrative but an open invitation. Each new participant adds a voice, a pair of hands, and a story. Every rose becomes part of a growing archive of lived experience, tracing women’s journeys across migration routes, conflict zones, and cultural borders.
How many roses will it take?
This artwork has no predetermined end. It continues to grow as it travels from city to city and country to country, shaped by the women who contribute to it and the communities that welcome it.
How many roses will it take?
How long will it take? Can women, through their hands and craft, fill the world with these noble roses? Can the gentle power of care, patience, and creation shape a world of hope? And can craft – which offers little material reward yet heals the human spirit – become a quiet act of feminism and peacebuilding, changing the world one rose at a time?
Roses of Ties Presentation at the Army Museum in Stockholm
Book Workshop
Turn your old tie into a rose at Artten Gallery.
🔹 No sewing skills needed
🔹 350 SEK /person
Made in Solidarity
Do you have a tie with a story? A memory woven into its fabric? Together with women from around the world, we are building a MUSEUM OF TIES – a place for healing, remembering, and safety, something for our children to hold onto in the future.
E-mail us your story or send a tie to:
Ludmila Christeseva
Artten Gallery
Artillerigatan 10
11451 Stockholm, Sweden.
Photograph: Sebastian von Wachenfeldt
