memory / mindset

2023 – ongoing
Series of graphic prints and plates visualising the creative space, memory and mindset
Wood engraving, woodcut, linocut, embossing, etching and drypoint

The work was created during a four-week curated artist residency program organized by Konst i Blekinge in Ronneby, Sweden, where I worked at Massmanska Kvarnen, an old hydroelectric power plant built in the 1760s. The series of works visualizes my thinking, memory, and creative process. The work ponders the route to get into a creative state, aiming to visualize the space that is needed to generate ideas and creativity.

My process began with a desire to reduce things rather than produce them. I cut a hole in the paper. I started carving a hole in the wood. Thoughts run, run, run. So fast that I can’t keep up. I go along with the rapids and can’t stop or grasp them. Sometimes, the stream stops, and then there is nothing.

There was an idea I was meant to implement. An idea that I couldn’t see; I couldn’t bring it to my consciousness from all the files in the mind’s messy archive. I thought about the layers I couldn’t see through. Cloud masses and seas. I wondered what it would look like if water were transparent like air, allowing you to see all the way to the bottom of the sea.

I thought about the things that are required of me in the world and the things that I think are required of me, even though they are not, and I tried to let go of all strings and nets. I tried to create an aura around me that didn’t allow anything unwanted to pass through. I am inside a large egg, in silence, floating. Beneath the layers, in the middle.

I thought about power lines, water pipes, physical and digital networks. Mysterious cables that connect things to each other. They go underground, inside walls, on surfaces, in the ceiling, visible and invisible. I thought about the water that flowed through the house, Massmanska Kvarnen. My time in AIR Blekinge allowed me to focus and access through the layers. The small town, the river, the sea, the graphic studio and Massmanska Kvarnen shaped my thinking and being. I looked for analogies between internal and external. I worked with several printmaking methods during the residency, including woodblock, linocut, embossing, drypoint, and etching. While I typically work on sculpture and textiles, I was drawn to woodcarving due to a pleasant bodily memory of it from years past. Etching was new to me, yet I discovered unexpected connections between this technique and the themes I work on. Experimenting with different methods invigorated my creativity, as new materials and tools introduced fresh ideas, inspiration, and enthusiasm into my work.