Comfort for the Public Space
I work within the contexts of contemporary textile arts and the rich and varied ritual vocabulary found in indigenous cultures and religious imagery. The question that permeates my practice is: What gives us comfort? How do we use the things we see, read and touch to find peace in a stormy world? How can public space be used as an instrument of solace?
Using textile to create my works is a very deliberate choice. It is a tactile material, engaging more senses than just sight. It is soft and harmless, yet capable of carrying identities, uniting people, and project vast ideas in one single work.
The resulting works and projects range in size from intimate to monumental. Color plays an important role, and works evolve organically – each segment relating to the previous and informing the next one.
I am very interested in the way in which all cultures, through all ages, choose to signify that objects have value, are sacred, are of importance. How we tend towards symmetry, rhythm, patterns and bright colours.
This fascination stems from people reacting to my work, different people being convinced that the same work was definitely influenced by traditional crafts of a people or region they recently visited or were otherwise interested in. So one and the same work could be, according to viewers, from the Amazon, from India, and from Lapland.
These interactions made me realize that there are far more similarities than differences between how we visually express that things are of value, like humans are born with this innate visual vocabulary that is influenced by its surroundings but still follows the same basic shapes and patterns.
My work does not represent any specific culture, it represents humanity’s urge to create culture from whatever is around them.