Korrespondenser
2009, 12 textile banners, 150 x 210 cm, textile paint
Korrespondenser (Correspondences) is a site specific work for the group exhibition and pedagogical project Eternal Return in Falun, where young artists from the region were invited to return and show what they work with today. The project, curated by Kajsa Pontén and hosted by the cultural association and exhibition space Magasinet, was a collaboration with municipality and schools that took place during one week in October 2009. It was visited by 3000 secondary- and highschool students and approximately 500 other visitors, who also took part in lectures and workshops held by the participants.
Korrespondeser is based on a displacement between public and private communications and spaces. I painted quotes from love letters by Selma Lagerlöf to her mistress and friend Sophie Elkan on textile banners corresponding to book pages. The intimate and passionate messages, written between 1894 and 1904, were installed along the façade facing the railway station, and along the same wall inside the exhibition space. Selma Lagerlöf spent forty years of her radical and nomadic life in Falun – a rich cultural heritage for the city to take care of. While researching for the work I was intrigued by Selma Lagerlöf’s ability to reach success within a society even more hetero-normative and patriarchal than today, while simultaneously remaining a very passionate, eccentric and alternative figure. The work’s geographic and thematic proximity to the train station and to ideas around traveling, longing, belonging and displacement, also worked connect to the theme of the exhibition.