Soft sculpture

Soft sculpture is a type of sculpture or three-dimensional form that incorporates materials such as cloth, fur, foam rubber, plastic, paper, fibre, or similar supple and nonrigid or pliable materials.

Soft sculptures can be stuffed, sewn, draped, stapled, glued, hung, or woven. These materials and techniques distinguish soft sculpture from sculpture made from more traditional hard materials such as stone, bronze, or wood that are then carved or modelled.

The term "soft sculpture" became a relevant art term in the 1960s, having been previously called "soft forms" or "objects" by the community of the time.  It was popularized by the artist Claes Oldenburg, a member of the pop art movement, who created oversized sculptural replicas of everyday objects from soft materials. Oldenburg's objects typically began as realistic forms that were stitched and/or stuffed to create a piece of sculpture.

Soft sculpture can be traced as far back as Victorian era (1880s) embroidery, in which Victorian women would insert small stuffed figures into their embroideries to memorialize their friends. However, the more common definition of soft sculpture can be dated back to the Dada movement of the 1920s and the readymade, which sought to break down the idea of a traditional art by treating everyday objects with absurdity, similar to Oldenburg's ‘absurd’ and oversized, but every day, objects.

One example of a readymade soft sculpture is Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 piece entitled Traveller's Folding Item created out of a textile typewriter cover.

More recently, contemporary sculptors such as Cosima von Bonin, Janet Echelman, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Faith Ringgold, Shinique Smith or Yayoi Kusama have expanded the technique to address contemporary topics such as feminism, political beliefs, or racial injustices.

Soft sculptures have often been toted to be a form of "rebellion" against conventional sculpting.