While we are waiting (tree rings), 2022

wood, plastic, epoxy, acrylic

dimensions variable

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

    

 

 

   

 

 

 

    

 

   

 

Installation view Subterranean, Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki

 

 

“The material is birch. Probably from an old, large tree in our garden. A few years ago, we refurbished a 1930’s house to live in. In the garden there is a small shed. It contained the original outdoor toilet for the house, a room for winter/summer storage and also a space for chopping firewood and practicing minor woodwork. The elderly woman we bought the house from had lived with her husband that seemed to have liked working with wood. After having lived here for 6 years, I decided to use that material. As a kind of payback and homage to the earlier owner. Bringing it alive again.

 

The idea of the eyes looking out is a combination of several thoughts. One, the idea of the “gaze” from outside that constitutes our self-image. Our ego or self are fictions and narratives that largely have been put into us from outside; from parents, school, language; culture at large. Also, there was this idea that I have been working on for some time, that the art object is invented by the spectator through his or her projections. And that this also works the other way around: The spectator is invented and sculpted by the art object. It’s a kind of who is looking at who, cross projections. Then there is the idea connecting this more with animism/pantheism and (super)natural beings connected to folktales and -beliefs. That there is soul and consciousness in all things and phenomenon.

 

I have called the work “While we are waiting (tree rings)” as a kind of metaphor to our lives and bodies evolving - a mix of experience and expectations. Some seem to be awaiting something, anticipating, anxiously looking up for something good or bad. Others seem to not want to be disturbed, more introvert. Yet others seem more open to a meeting, a personal encounter, a contact.

 

All in all, I think the work mirror our insecurities, our vulnerability – but also a wish and an openness for genuine contact and fellowship. Also, there are these issues of growing, of growing up, of aging. Tree rings like years passing and skin aging, everything happening to us marking us. Someone might see children looking expectantly upwards, some will see a family, some a lonely person, some an elderly crying out his or her existential pain. In the end it's about humanism, existentialism; being present, as a subject but also as an object.”

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