SVE
Portfolio med relaterade konstverk, samt prototyper och mock-ups till KROPPSHISTORIST MUSEUM
EN
”My body history has become a temple of false beliefs, cut loose from all that is truly holy. It is wild and anarchistic towards my own curation. A beast, but not the beast I need.
To experience the body fully, to respectfully embrace the history of all it is and has been, you have to sift through dusty belief systems, and fight off old gods.
You have to be your own prayermaker. You have to turn like a great wheel.
The document a fetish. The norm and the ideal, the gods to which I bear offerings of my true self. Piece by piece, I turn into a falsehood of angel dust, or a wicked witch, with demon eyes and chipped claws and crooked wolf’s teeth. The harsh shaming and the ironic soft encouragement turn into mantras. I cook slow in the stew of hatred. I turn, I turn, but only towards the funny house mirror, and the cross upon which my autonomy hangs.
I must seek my cycles. My bones. I must turn, I must turn like a great wheel.”
Body History Museum is an immersive, auto fictitious conceptual exhibition project about body history, body image, and how we can take back our power – created from the perspective of a marginalized, disabled body. The exhibition I am creating around this concept is multidisciplinary, consisting of installations, video works with dance and movement, as well as text and photography based works.
Body History Museum is a phenomenological approach to the multiple, ever-changing, dynamic body images we have and the relation they have to the lived body, the body-for-others and the body as seen by others.
I am trying to capture the lived body in the moment, as well as investigate the roles I willingly and unknowingly take on, and the myths I continue to tell to myself about myself. I am subject, object, and archetype in my body history.
The current themes of my works are:
1. INHERITED BODY/ANCESTRY/MOTHER
2. FAT BODY/SOCIAL NORMS/CULTURE
3. SEXUAL BODY/RELATIONSHIPS/ABUSE
4. MEDICAL BODY/TRAUMA/DISABILITY
And the overarching theme for all these bodies is the myth. Body history is an archive, the body is an archive. But the telling of it, the projection of it, the expression of it becomes myth. This work is partly the telling of that myth, looking at and responding to that myth with a curious gaze. And presenting an honest curation of events that formed that myth.
It is also partly the re-writing of the myth. The taking back of power over the myth, and the body that carries the myth. It is a paradigm shift. It is a new language. A new mirroring entirely. It is body in movement, body in the present moment, after shedding layers of myth. It is a blank page, save for the inherent will to live in that body, shaping the bones of the story.
In my art, and in dance especially, I have to get over what it looks like. Long before my body is looked at, I have to put it to action. I need to be in it, experience it, move it. And know why I am doing it. It is not for it to be looked at. Body-based spirituality and body-centered mysticism. Body not as temple but as prayer. As movement. As agency.
My dance works are part emotional, inutitive, expressive dance, part a minimalistic repetition-based choreography, combining different styles of dance within visual art. Examining both the emotional-spiritual body and the physicality of body within ritual space.
Body History Museum displays my body manifested. The body is a historical record and can become a museum of our experiences, and the views others have of us. Body history becomes a collection of myths. I want to explore the myths that have been created about my body over the years and let my body become a sounding board for myths we have created and recreated since time immemorial. My body as saint, madonna, whore, hunter, gatherer, and the one who shelters the history of my ancestors. The body images superimposed on mine are myths, something you can believe in, for lack of knowledge. By creating and recreating these body images, I seek the knowledge of my true body.
I reclaim my power in this, I expose the bodies that have been manifested over mine, and I try to manifest a body that is completely my own. A marginalized, chronically ill and partially disabled body, but still something so much more. Something beyond subject-object, something beyond perception-cognition. Something that exists in space unlike all other things.
It is a grieving process as well as research around what manifests body, and what has shaped my own body image. I look at self-portraiture with a wide lens and use for example the photograph, the x-ray, the diagnostic code, the pediatric file, the icon, the poem and the lab result as portrait mediums to capture the different bodies that have been called mine.
Body History Museum is a way of showing my body history without violating it. It is how I can do myself justice, as researcher, artist, curator, and body.
In short the installation is a complete unity – wherever and however it is displayed depending on the location – creating the illusion of a body history museum, it is immersive and fantastical in its approach. The installation consists of illuminated cabinets and frames and light tables, with photography-based collages, objects and documents, as well as media works in the form of timelapses and dance/movement video works where the moving body goes through the evolution of its manifestation.
During the spring of 2024 I have done research and planned dance works, supported by TAIKE. During the summer and fall of 2024 I will execute the video works for their first exhibition which will be at HAA Gallery in 2025. I also have exhibitions at KH Renlund’s museum in Kokkola, and at Gallery Ratamo in Jyväskylä in 2025.
My regular portfolio: http://www.soulmamaarts.com/portfolio/ as well as some exhibition examples: http://www.soulmamaarts.com/utstallningar-exhibitions-events/
VIDEO WORK TEASERS, TIMELAPSES
The dance videos I am creating will be part ritualistic repetition, and intuitive improv. This is partly because of my memory issues, which make long choreographies hard for me. Also, the different topics/myths I am working around are deeply intimate and I wish to capture the raw expression in my body, as much as possible. The video works are based upon fragmentation, repetition, meditation and initiation.
Here is a WORK IN PROGRESS teaser for one of the video works being released in 2025. The work, with working title PERI-GNOSIS, deals with the frustration and trauma from not getting diagnosed correctly, facing misbelief or incompetence, and being shackled by the body images and diagnoses put down in health care journals.
Choreography, dance and editing by myself. Music by Styr0x. Color correction by Christoffer Maid. Technical support by Mikael Liikanen. The final work will be approximately double the length.
WHAT DO YOU WAKE UP TO? (working title) is another video work that will be released in 2025. This is a process version of the work, the music is placeholder and it awaits original score, and further editing. This work deals with the fat, sexual body – touching on lust, shame, social norms and fetishizing the erotic fat body. It shows the loss of self-knowing and agency as the outsider perspective takes over – a phenomenon know to many with bodies outside of the norm. As soon as the marginalized body is gazed upon it becomes the body images and judgements placed upon it.
LIFE SUPPORT? INSTALLATION 2023
Installation, repurposed overhead projectors, illumination, photo art (2023)
Here exhibited at Tempus, Jakobstad, 2023.
CREATION HYMNS, ongoing series, 2024
”𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘴, 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴.”
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘏𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 – Roberto Calasso
These pictures are part of 𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘯𝘴 𝘐 – 𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴
In this experiment I am working with repetition as prayer to bring my mother’s face out in my own.
”𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥.”
𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘙𝘶𝘯 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 – Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I. Looking for my mother’s bones
II. When the Mother Myth is a release of bones
“Forgive these bones I’ve been hiding…”
“…and the bones I’m about to leave.”
Ethel Cain, Family Tree
Our individual mythology rests upon our bones. The entire body of story hangs upon our bones.
My mother wrote “La Loba searches and searches for my lost bones”, feeling the wild woman inside her slowly getting rebuilt. Her story ready to be retold.
The mythology of my mother I will never know fully. I will never completely gather and count all her bones. If I could, I could breathe life back into her. But I cannot. La Loba did it for her once, it cannot be done again.
There were years of my mother hiding bones. That is part of her mythology. As it is mine.
I’ve been searching for my lost bones, La Loba guiding. Searching more than not after the same revelation that my mother found as she rearranged her bones. Rewrote her story. Recreated her mythology. Took the breath of life anew.
I am researching the lines on my face. The look in my eyes. The roundness of my stomach. And my fingers. I am looking for my mother. I want her to show in my mythology. I want her to take physical form in the body of my story. In the story of my body. I am moving in space to catch a glimpse of my mother. A study in grief. A study in the gathering of bones.
I am looking to bring my mother’s face out in my own. To see the “Río Abajo Río”, the river beneath the river.
WAITLESS BODY, photo series, 2024
”The moist magic of story.”
𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘙𝘶𝘯 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 – Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Through this work I am experimenting with the formless, and deformed, body under water. It is work done in several stages; first I created my self-portraits, then printed them on transparent foil, photographed them under water with effects made by mirrors, air and light. Technical support by Mikael Liikanen. Here the inspiration from retro sci-fi is very prominent.
The work here is inspired by the sight of my mother’s dead body, as well as the weightlessness (and waitlessness) of feeling my mother’s body being reborn in my own.
RITUAL DANCE, ongoing series, 2023-2024
Ritual dance is an ongoing series of photographs of the moving body. I use ritualistic repetition and long exposure time to create a body less prone to being seen as static and stereotype. Instead I am looking for the archetypal goddess which can move between worlds.
OTHER WORKS, PREVIOUS ITERATIONS, MOCKUPS
In this gallery there are other works (photograms, documents, poems, installations) as well as some photos from previous iterations of BODY HISTORY MUSEUM (these iterations without the new media works, and without the aesthethic of science and retro sci-fi).
