Through my body there are channels, internal passages, which force mass into a silent flow. I take the process for granted and let it go on within me. The mass picks up and releases, is divided and sorted. I let my body take care of that, let go of control and let my inner self take responsibility for my most distant body parts. That close-knit relationship to something hidden fascinates me, where the relationship is straight through a life-changing symbiosis and at the same time a forgotten transaction.

It is no more than a millimeter from our exterior to our interior. Where the intestines move slowly and force our last part of life further in a spiral of events. At the same time, the distance is enormous, the skin creates mountains and walls. Impermeable secretions, layers and layers of other memories.

With the help of wax, I have created intestinal-like neck links, irregular related shapes to our own body's internal organs.

Silver has a high status when placed in relation to a human body as jewelry. But silver can also act as a poison when moved to the inside of the body. Karnauba wax is one of the hardest vegetable waxes and is mainly used as a protected surface with its liquid-repellent property. Waxes have throughout history had a double meaning and purpose where the beeswax in pure form has a high value but also a negative sound as something disgustingly repulsive.

Both materials have a history in health where both have been used for sterilization in medicine and care and the same in beauty where beeswax and silver both act as health carriers. Here, the room becomes of the utmost importance for the purpose and influence of the material.

When I bring these materials together, a confusion arises, what is their relationship? What do the materials do to each other and how would it feel to wear the jewelry against your body? Like carrying their intestines on the outside. Maybe the presence of silver makes it just portable? Without the silver, the wax would slowly break, melting into something unfaithful to the warm skin. The silver without its wax body would echo empty and sharp.


Inside me there are passages

mild steel, cotton yarn, bees wax, carnouba wax, salt, vinegar, lemon juice

The sculpture symbolizes a body in an emotional process, slowly crumbling and weakening. With its limiting walls, a room is created like a cocoon, body or a coffin. The piece can talk about the borderland between physicality and nature. Small vibrations in the limbs pass unnoticed and the course of the events are only visible from the fragments that are collected underneath. Slowly, the work changes with its environment, pieces come loose while others are built up in the form of salt crystals where the vulnerable metal skeleton is exposed.


What Remains II

The title Sisyphean denotes a task which can never be completed. The necklace is made of recycled remains of several bronze casting “trees” created thorugh the lost wax casting method. This work functions as a remark on the makers own process and the resulting bearer of the makers objects.
The work aims to examine the role of the contemporary maker in relation to materials, conceptual processes and sustainability. Where do our materials come from and where do they end up? What are the ethical responsibilities of using materials from deep below or working with materials that are/were alive and how do we create symbiotic relationships with other than human entities? Can an increased focus on sustainability force our artistic practices to take new unexpected, experimental leaps? How can craft practices be used to reflect upon contemporary material culture and what impact will it have on the future?  


Sisyphean

The old school desk stands on unsteady limbs, in a slow falling angle it leans towards the floor.

The desk came to me from an horse shoe nail factory in western Sweden. I was going through a difficult time in my life at this point and I felt a strong need to look back and deal with my own history to be able to move forward.

I started physically moving with the desk before winter and slowly at first I started taking it apart, piece by piece, while collecting thoughts of my own self positioned behind a similar one in an early age. This soon turned more intense when at the same time, my art teacher turned out to have severe personal issues that he took out on my in aggressive outbursts. This safe place as an art student in an art school, suddenly turned into a full on memory lane of previous school environments with similar stories that I had hidden away. 

I spent about three months diving head first into these memories while also dealing with my very present school situation with a problematic teacher. I started taking apart the desk more violently, with a personally made hand forged axe by my partner. Through these months I carved, cut, chopped, bled and sweat while peeling of the desks skin and at the same time letting the memories come unfolded.

Time became crucial for this process to be given space. To be able to re-live and deal with the pain I had inside I hade to fully become one with the wood. And as a complete surprise, the wood peels smelled just as fresh as newly cut down trees. even though the desk was over 40 years old its body seemed to become fresh again, just like me. 

Time helped me with this process, to reflect, handle and accept, through a very hands on method of working.



RÄP

"Lågor" is a sculptural embodiment of vulnerability and how it can be carried within ourselves

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Helena Perminger