Digitaliseum, Malmö 23.5 - 14.9 2024

papiermaché, clay, speakers
soundpiece 6,37´ min long

There is a curiosity in Helena's art about who and what inhabits different spaces, whether they are real creatures or mythological figures. To give a clam shell a voice and let it speak about longing and desire.

We dug in the earth, and…….
Vasa konsthall 2024

papiermaché, video. The video is made in collaboration with Linus Johansson and Andrea Lundgren.

The exhibition included works by Fanny Carinasdotter, Simon Gran Danielsson, Moa Ryman, Hannes Iversen, Michaela Frycklund, Mattias Olofsson, Maria K. Olsson, Helena Wikström and Gerd Aurell.

We moved downwards, to find what was hidden underground. What is it that stirs under earth, skin and consciousness?

The title of the exhibition is taken from the Norwegian author Tor Ulven’s Grave Goods from 1988. Like many other segments in the book, it is a fragment. The text starts with Ulven naming items that are buried underfoot: scraps of chicken, sheep legs, mussels, broken pieces of pottery, counterfeit sets of dice, a bag of copper coins, the skeleton of a guinea pig. All the while we wander around on top, unaware of all the former lives and memories that are concealed below our feet. 

Tallyho, Tallyho - jag har skjutit en dront
Umeå Filmfestival Dec 2023
Tromsö International Film Festival Jan 2024

video 5´21
directors: Helena Wikström and Peter Sténs
film and editing: Peter Sténs
music: Henrik Oja
lyrics: Harriet Löwenhjelm
voice: Lina Hognert
translation to English: Sebastian Secker Walker

genom tusen strider och smekningar
Tegen2 Stockholm 23.9 - 16.10 2022

participating artists: Gerd Aurell, Ann-Kristin Källström, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Norrakollektivet, Evelina Sondell, Helena Wikström and Ulla-Carin Winter.



Not for the first time and far from the last but for the first time - for the first time in human history we understood that it was our fault that this species was gone forever. The world was forever changed and the perfect chain was broken even though God's benevolence and abundance would not really have allowed this to happen.

In Harriet Löwenhjelm's poem Jakt på fågel from 1913, she speaks about a man who shoot a dodo and how it falls from the sky and lands in the space where the fish live. The dodo was in reality unable to fly. Almost one meter high, quite sturdy and relatively fearless when the Dutch sailors came to Mauritius in the beginning of the 17-th century. A hundred years later it was extinct. The strange thing is that nobody today knows exactly what it looked like. Whats left are fossils and drawings and paintings in which the dodo is presented very differently. I continue my search for this star of extinct species that still continues to amaze us.

Museum Anna Nordlander, Skellefteå 3.2 - 10.3 2024
Galleri Tegen2, Stockholm 31.3 - 16.4
Tvärån, Umeå 10.6 - 20.6 2023
Galleri Verkligheten 30.6 - 14.7 2023

papiermaché, 15 min long sound piece

Helena Wikström's works search below the surface. She digs pot, creates tunnels and descends below the earth's crust and water surface in search of a space of gravity, a space defined by the attraction of our bodies to the ground. Using gravity as a compass, drawing a vertical map of the seabed landscapes we cannot see. It feels as if the movement, when the plumb goes up and down, rethinks a traditional world view, how we have learned to read the world, time, as horizontal.

Compared to other animals, man appears to be a lousy navigator. How do you find your way on an ocean when all you see is the horizon. Gradually, various techniques and tools were developed to make sailing safer. Someone stood on the deck and threw a weight into the water with a line marked with knots and fabric to measure the depth. They plumbed deeper and deeper not only for the safety of sailing, but also because they wanted to understand something about what they couldn't see.

Tvärån, Umeå 10.6 - 20.6 2023
Galleri Verkligheten 30.6 - 14.7 2023

As part of Konstfrämjandet i Västerbottens project Älven I created an installation for the creek Tvärån in Umeå. The soundpiece is inspired by a poem written by Artur Lundkvist about naiads and dryads. It describes the difference between the two species and their different relation to water, trees and love.

Link to sound piece on soundcloud:
dryader och najader 6.39 min

photo nr 1 and 2: Erik Abel

Article in Västerbottens Kuriren.

As one out of five artists I was chosen to make a proposal for a public commission for the University hospital in Umeå. The locations are all selected where the Region did not follow their own recommendations to use 1 % of the building constructional costs for public art.
The project is initiated by Konstfrämjandet I Västerbotten and KC Nord.


My Swedish text:
Entré Väst är den ingång till Norrlands universitetssjukhus som man kommer till via tåg och buss. På sätt och vis sjukhusets huvudentré men känslan man får är mer att man befinner sig i en garageinfart. Det sägs att entrén är tillfällig. Det är dock oklart hur länge eller om det verkligen är på det viset.

I mitt förslag har jag placerat en högblank tall på var sida om entrén likt två väktare som vakar över sjukhuset och alla de människor som befinner sig i det. Tallen har i Sverige inte varit speciellt aktad. Den äger sorts eremitisk värdighet, så hög, rak och envis. Står pall mot starka stormar och kan växa i sand eller klippskrevor - på ställen där inga andra träd skulle klara. På samma gång borstig, vresig och krokig men just därför är det också möjligt att tycka om den.

Jag förundras så av ljuset nu när det återkommer efter vintern. Hela himlen färgas och man omsluts i färg. När de sista strålarna träffar tallens stam lyser den orange. I ett försök att fånga den känslan har jag drivit upp färgen på mina tallar till intensivt orange med en gul kant.

Jag har reagerat på belysningen under de två huskroppar som ligger vid ingången. Där är väldigt mörkt och lågt i tak. En varm belysning och ev. en annan ton på innertaket skulle göra entrén mer välkomnande.

På sjukhuset. Alla dessa lager. Märkliga arkitektoniska rester som blivit kvar efter olika renoveringar, hål och rör som kommer ut ur väggarna, stolar som inte går att sitta på för att det går ett rör i huvudhöjd. Lagren av ljud och olika ljus. Information som är rätt så kaotisk. Människorna, ja alla människor med sitt. Det gäller att gå varsamt fram.

På barnavdelningen träffar vi en sköterska som berättar för oss - vi har flyttat ”temporärt” men vet inte hur länge detta temporära läge ska vara. Vi har en gestaltning av Jögge Sundqvist som inte får plats i denna korridor. Det är en interaktiv skulptur som barnen med sina egna handlingar kan följa längs korridoren. Detta gjorde att barnen kunde fokusera på annat och fick en bra början på sitt möte med sjukhuset. Skulpturen fattas oss.

11.11 21 - 21.12.21
Rome

artists:
Nikolina Sögnen (NO)
Bjargey Olafsdottir (IS)
Helena Wikström (SE)
Ole Wich (FO)
Laura Böök ( FI)

Stalker Rome, Noworking Rome, Circolo Scandinavio
The residence is part of the local cultural project, La Zattera (The Raft) and the Scuola di urbanesimo nomade (School of Nomadic Urbanism), led by Stalker and part of the cultural season of the City of Rome. Participants from both the Nordic region and Italy will have the possibility to develop artistic projects and knowledge building, with focus on reuse of existing urban sites, in parallel with the activities offered by the cultural program of La Zattera. 

Circumstance, the unfolding of times and spaces to which a place belongs, is a device of public and creative involvement. It’s aimed at acting and/or thinking the possibilites generated by the re-emergence, and by weaving lost memories into new narratives. Circumstance is a convivial opportunity for a possible meeting between places and people that are increasingly divided by social, economic and cultural conditions – conditions that stand in the way of a desirable and happy coexistence.


CIRCOSTANZA I – 28 NOVEMBER 2021

Circumstance n. 4, the first of the 2nd year of the project La Zattera, is dedicated to exploring places and evoking the memories of the Afghan and Kurdish communities around the Ostiense station.

CIRCOSTANZA II – 19 DECEMBER 2021

Circumstance n.5 was built around the memories of the migrations of the Horn of Africa to and around Tiburtina station, which over the years has been a landing place in Rome.

Kerba, a station journalistically known as “Hotel Africa”, was a self-managed occupation that has now disappeared but marked a fundamental stage in the recent history of migrations.

https://retakereuse.wordpress.com

Under Ytan
Hallands konstmuseum, Halmstad
30.11 2024 – 24.10 2025
participating artists: Sebastian Blomqvist, Kristina Frank, Tilda Lovell, Helena Wikström and Anita Wohlén

Höstljus Umeå
29.10 - 21.11 2021

Helena Wikström's work seeks to descend below the surface. She digs holes, creates tunnels and finds underground sound worlds. There is a curiosity in Helena's art about who inhabits these places, whether they are real creatures or mythological figures. These bodies are defined by changes in position - we experience them in the movement itself.

In this case, the creature is an octopus, composed and animated from about a hundred charcoal drawings. Unlike us humans, the octopus has a sense called a statocyst that allows it to sense gravity under water and thus know where it is in relation to the surface. In the film Anima, the octopus is given its own composition for the choreographed movement. A breath and a song in which we can rest in and let our thoughts wander.

thanks to Umeå Kommun och KC Nord

c-print 900 x 600 mm, 23 karat gilded branch, sign with a poem, edition 5

bought by The public art agency Sweden (Statens Konstråd)
Swedish Forest Agency in Luleå

Hidden in a dark tree, is a golden bough,
golden in leaves and pliant stem,
sacred to Persephone, the underworld’s Juno, all the groves
shroud it, and shadows enclose the secret valleys.
But only one who’s taken a gold-leaved fruit from the tree
is allowed to enter earth’s hidden places.


This lovely Proserpine has commanded to be brought to her
as a gift: a second fruit of gold never fails to appear
when the first one’s picked, the twig’s leafed with the same metal.
So look for it up high, and when you’ve found it with your eyes,
take it, of right, in your hand: since, if the Fates have chosen you,
it will come away easily, freely of itself: otherwise you
won’t conquer it by any force, or cut it with the sharpest steel.


Fördolt i ett lövrikt träd finns en gren, 
av guld i sin böjliga stam och i bladen.

Av en helig lund är den skyddad, 
runt om hägnad tätt av dalens skymmande skuggor. 
Men bara den som brutit denna gyllene kvist
tillåts inträde till jordens dolda platser.


När den brutits växer en ny 
gyllene ut, och av samma guld blir trädgrenen lövad. 
Rikta ögonen högt och sök; så snart du den funnit, 
bryt den, som riten är, med din hand. Är du kallad av ödet

följer den självmant med; om ej kan du aldrig av egen 
kraft, ej heller med slipat stål få loss den från trädet. 



fritt från Aeneaden av Vergilius

Galleri Syster
19.3 - 11.4 2021

In collaboration with Andrea Lundgren and Linus Johansson initiated by galleri Syster as part of their project SamArtBete.

We built the den together. Each of us was already many. It quickly became crowded.

under marken is a badgers sett. A system of roots filled with echoes. A rhizome made of sculptures, films and sound installations. Below, many voices speak, sing or whisper - all talking at once. We work at night, watch TV or read. Dreaming about digging and when we write we build. Carving a small cut and twisting the roots into threads to tie new knots in our organic machine. The vegetation gets through the walls.

There are rooms we do not visit. Do not look there, here is something else, come! Evasive maneuvers and routes of escape. We are looking for underground moments. When we dug we found treasures (or rubbish) we do not know, but it happens that we steal from others. Some things we hide away. Down in the den all that is human is penetrated by earth and tunnels. In the deepest darkness there is something that must be protected.

thanks to Galleri Syster, Längmanska kulturfonden and Kupan Luleå.

Lambda print,
mounted on black forex 5 mm
size 70x50, edition 10

Italienska palatset in Växjö Sweden 2020

Hand-colored Lambda print , 2015
50 x 70, series of 8, edition 5
Moderna Museet photographic collection 2021

Umeå kommuns konsthall, 2015
Arbetets Museum, 2019

In the open-air market in Sheki, Azerbijan every stand is numbered and when evening comes around the salesmen carefully cover up what ́s left and lock the gates until next morning.

The remaining objects are appealingly beatiful in their loneliness, but at the same time they have a ghastly appearance. Our imagination provides us with indistinct pictures of what is underneath the drapery.

Fucked up beyond recognition
St Pancras Crypt, London, 2019

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear”
Köttinspektionen, Uppsala
20.01 - 04.02 2018

“What could not be expected in the country of eternal light”
Galleri BOX, Gothenburg
27.04 - 27.05 2018

“I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night”
Konsthallen Väven, Umeå
01.09 - 07.10 2018

In connection with the novel’s 200th anniversary, the nine members of the artist group VERKLIGHETEN worked under the theme “Frankenstein’s monster”. The exhibition series explored the many sides of the Frankenstein-theme through film, sound, photography, drawing and installation. The artworks brought up topics such as archives, contemporary monsters and experiments in nature that have gone wrong.

THE BUBBLE FLOATS BEFORE, THE SHADOW STALKS BEHIND
Installation, video 2018

The book Frankenstein begins with a series of letters from scientist Robert Walton - to his sister. In the letters he describes how he in the middle of the polar ice meets Victor Frankenstein and they become good friends. These letters and letters from Mary Shelley and her friends inspired me and during a year I wrote many letters to Mary. Some of these letters together with photos and videos from my own archive became this film. A film that permits my own and Marys life to meet on many levels and topics.

Umeå, August 25th

Dear Mary,

There are so many questions – so many things that I want to know more about.

I´m following your steps and I´m lead astray. I have created an imaginary landscape and now I must find a way to navigate in it. Life and memories exist between my words and my imagery.

Old places, restlessness, a longing for something else.

But this is not the full story.

The whole summer I have been listening to Kate Tempest, over and over again.

But we are still mythical.
We are still permanently trapped
somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful.
We are still Godly,
that’s what’s made us so monstrous.
It just feels like we’ve forgotten
that we’re much more
than the sum of the things that belong to us.

X X X Helena

the last two photos from Galleri Box: Hendrik Zeitler

UEFF Umeå European Film Festival 2018
SVT December 2018
Pussel och Pirater Västerbottens Museum,
11.11 2018 – 17.2 2019

A radio historical documentary telling the story of how the first radio pirates in Sweden, two woodsmen from Lomsjö in 1952 challenged the swedish radio monopoly while the Swedish Security police where chasing them throughout the northern Swedish forests.

BAUTAFILM in co-production with SVT and Film i Västerbotten
2018, 28 min

producers HELENA WIKSTRÖM and SIMON ÖHMAN JÖNSSON
photo SIMON ÖHMAN JÖNSSON
animation & graphics HELENA WIKSTRÖM
editing FREDRIK OSKARSSON
sound SIMON J NYQVIST
mix ROBIN SVENSK
grade RASMUS WEST
composer HENRIK OJA
music supervisor RASMUS THORD
producer THERESE HÖGBERG
supported by ANIDOX: LAB, Nordic culture fund, Swedish Art Grants Committee, KC Nord

Exhibition with acrylic paintings on mdf used for the animated parts of the film. Four channel sound installation in collaboration with Daniel Westman.

Gallerija Nova, Zagreb
24.5 - 29.5 2016

c-print, text

A project in the framework of Corners of Europe in collaboration with Una Bauer, Zagreb.

  The curtains can be drawn aside or closed any time during the ride, but the everchanging scenery that passes by will never look exactly the same again. It is nothing like looking at a film when the director already has choosen the focus in the picture for you. No , you have to do it yourself. All the time. Set focus. Hide or Reveal.

http://www.cornersofeurope.org

Radiotystnad/Radio Silence
Konsthallen Väven, Umeå
7.2 - 15.3 2015

By looking at the history of The Corner House in Riga one can also tell the history of the city.  There has been a shop, a school a police station but for many years KGB had their headoffice and prison cells in the house. The house was abandoned for many years because of all the severe and tragic things that happened in there.

In this series I took photos of the light flashes from the emergency exit signs in the whole house appearing like ghosts from the past.

(Re)construction of Friendship
01.05-19.10. 2014
KGB Building, file No 1914/2014
RIGA /2014

Radiotystnad
Konsthallen Väven, Umeå
07.02-29.03 2015
 

Curated by:  Inese Baranovska, Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir, Inga Lāce, Kārlis Vērpe and Kitija Vasiļjeva

Participating artists: Daniel & Geo Fuchs (Germany), Nikita Kadan (Ukraine), Sandra Krastiņa and Kristaps Epners (Latvia), Alban Muja (Kosovo), association "Orbīta" (Latvia), Tanel Rander (Estonia), Spessi (Sigurtór Hallbjörnsson, Iceland) & Erik Pauser (Sweden), Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (Lithuania), Johan Waerndt & Monika Marklinger (Sweden) and Helena Wikström (Sweden)

During the fifty years of the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union, the KGB headquarters in Riga, also known as the Corner House, became a prominent symbol of totalitarian power that, in the 21st century Riga, still stands to bear testimony to total war, mass persecutions and genocide. The exhibition (Re)construction of Friendship is a collaborative art project shaped through interaction with current political and global state of affairs in a particularly "hot" venue. By examining the important role of contemporary artists as mediators of cultural consciousness and initiators of social relationships, the exhibition will attempt to take hold on some specific temporal, historical and geographical realities – and the ambiguous relationship we call friendship. Lost or forgotten, the hardest question asked is: How can friendships be (re)-constructed?

Facility D-O

The red drapery gives the inside of the bus a definition and a tone of its very own as the drive continues along the Neretva riverside. The curtains can be drawn aside or closed at any time during the ride, but the ever changing scenery that passes by will never look exactly the same again. It is nothing like looking at a film when the director already has chosen the focus in the picture for you. No, you have to do it yourself. All the time. Set focus. Hide or Reveal. The bus takes us high up in the mountains to one of the most expensive and secret hideouts ever.

If you follow the beautiful wreaths of the Neretva River you will end up in Konjic, in the Zlatar Mountains. This is the place where Tito hid his nuclear bunker: Facility D-O ARK. It was built in extreme secrecy from 1953 to 1979, and the cost was 4.6 billion dollars. In case of atomic catastrophe or nuclear war Tito, his family members and around 300 of his closest associates could find shelter here for up to six months. The bunker covers a total of 6854 m² with 100 bedrooms, 2 conference rooms, 5 operation centers, two kitchens, hospital, fresh running water from natural wells, heating and ventilation systems.  The builders were carefully chosen and had to sign contracts to keep everything about this place secret, but still different sources estimates that as many as 10 000 workers died during the construction. Just like the Cold War this was and still is a place filled with insecurity, fear and suspicion.  A waiting room without a scheduled appointment.

The uncannily direct view of the camera eye is also employed in the documentary work “Facility D-O” by Helena Wikström. Her project containing two photographic series the artist made during her travels in the Balkans. The artist´s series of photos were taken near Konjic, the location of Facility D-O, now more famous as Tito´s survival bunker, but for a long time one of Yugoslavia´s most kept secrets. The artist focuses on details, in order to report on the hidden power structures confined aesthetically in the objects of the past, which are now presented as time machines.

Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir and Kārlis Vērpe
 

reconstruction of friendship

galleri Rostrum, Malmö, 2016

video loop: 12.53 min
camera and edit: Helena Wikström
music: Daniel Westman

During a period of two years we examined the Umeå river delta area in northern Sweden. This area is interesting because the landscape changes very quickly. During the ice age the land was pressed down and it is now rising back up with a speed of 1 cm/year which doesn’t maybe sound much but with a flat shoreline quickly makes a difference. The river also brings a lot of sand and sediment and this material accumulates in the delta so that new islands are born. The new-born islands are first just sandbanks but soon enough grasses and shrubs start growing there and eventually the island is part of the delta’s deciduous forest.

In Vadaren we follow a person walking in the river between the islands. Sometimes the camera dives down in the water and follows the person in this underwater landscape. What today is covered by flowing water will in a few years time have risen and become land.

The film is distributed by Filmform.
link here
and a short excerpt here

“Spare Time”
Bildmuseet, Umeå
6.6 - 4.09 2011

“Spare Time: Utopias on the Verge of Commonness”
National Gallery, Prague
September 6 - November 13, 2011

“Survival Kit”
Latvian Centre of Contemporary Art, Riga
September 8 - 18, 2011

collaboration with Gerd Aurell.

The Ume River Delta covers an area of about 19 square kilometers just downstream the city of Umeå in northern Sweden. The river flows from west to east, arising in the mountains along the Norwegian border and ending in the Gulf of Bothnia. The Ume River Delta is best known for its abundance of birds and is one of the areas in Sweden included in the International Convention of Wetlands due to its major importance as a resting place for migrating birds. The Ume River Delta was designated a European Natura-2000 Reserve in 2008

The Delta project has developed and evolved through our work with an installation for Bildmuseet. During the initial part of the project we met and interviewed ice fishers, school children and cross country skiers – people who in their spare time take part in outdoor activities in the Ume Delta area. In the following parts we decided to focus on the connection between Delta and Utopia and the Death of Utopia.

The first exhibition “Spare Time”, was shown at Bildmuseet in Umeå (June 2011) and “Spare Time: Utopias on the Verge of Commonness” shown at the National Gallery in Prague (Sept 2011). We also made an exhibition for the Riga art festival “Survival Kit 3”, that we called “Delta Dreams” (Sept 2011). For the exhibition at Bildmuseet we built a green bird-hide as a room to contain a book. The inside of the bird-hide was papered with photo wallpaper from the Ume Delta, a photo of the tangled brownish-gray alden trees that are very typical for the Delta area. We turned the delta inside out, so that you could climb up in the bird-hide and enter into the delta in order to read the books. In the exhibition in Riga we made a picnic into the Daugava Delta where we met up with a local activist group.

MADE festival
Norrlandsoperan, Umeå
May 6th – June 21st  2008

In collaboration with Gerd Aurell

Another City is Possible was a work commissioned by NorrlandsOperan and the city of Umeå for the 2008 MADE festival. The installation was built with flowers, pallets and cable drums and inspired by another city: Istanbul. Istanbul’s beautiful mosque, Hagia Sofia, is in this version just emerging out of the pavement of Operaplan in central Umeå. Utopian discussions were organized in the installation focusing on what to change and add to our own city.

Platform, Vasa Finland 2003
Silvermuseet Arjeplog 2003
Västerbottens Museum 2004
Vilhelmina 2007
European Festival of the Night, Korpilombolo 2007
Umeå Autumn Light Festival, 2009
Kramfors Konsthall, 2011

collaboration with Gerd Aurell

“Portraits in a Painted Landscape” is an art project where people in Northern Sweden are pictured against a setting which investigates the concept of place. The artwork is a combination of painting and portrait photography: photographs of people posing in front of slarge scale painted background scenes. This artwork is an ongoing project and we have so far completed eight different series: Västerbotten, Arjeplog, MS Obbola and Philosophers/Aestetics in Sandvik, Vilhelmina church, Vilhelmina park, the reindeer slaughtery house and The light festival in Umeå 2009.

Det är egendomligt, men på många av bilderna som nu ligger utspridda framför mig på skrivbordet, framstår människorna som de egentligen fiktiva och det målade landskapet som det verkliga. Ungefär som när man placerar en tecknad figur i en realistisk omgivning; på en parkeringsplats, i en skogsglänta.
   Eller om det bara är den målade bakgrunden som får människan framför att skilja ut sig så starkt. Att hon blir övertydlig, öververklig.
   Frågan jag oförmedlat ställer mig när jag ser de olika personerna är:
   Vad gör de här?
   Och frågan fortsätter genast ut i ett allmännare:
   Vad gör vi här? Ja, vi människor; vad gör vi här, på jorden, i världen, i levandet?
   Kropparna uppställda, paraderande.
   Så mycket – kropp.
   Så mycket – djur.
   Stora utställda utklädda djurkroppar.
   På besök. På besök i verkligheten.
   Och med saker i händerna:
   Tingen, som betyder något.
   Tingen som är tyngden och meningen och anknytningen. Som ger oss rätten, kanske, att få vara här. En sorts avsikt med just våra liv, just hans, hennes, mitt, att vi kan få finnas här med våra underliga kroppar.
   Tingen ger oss – paradoxalt eller helt följdriktigt – ett alibi.
   (Ordet alibi är latin och betyder, märkligt nog, annorstädes, uttytt: vistelse på annan ort.)
   Fast en av sjömännen håller inte upp något ting liksom framför sig. Han står med en rykande cigarrett mellan fingrarna och gör, säkert helt omedvetet, cigarrettens essens kristallklar: den är närvaro. Medan den långsamt brinner upp och förflyktigas är den ren närvaro.
   Inte heller den unge slaktaren med björnkraniet håller fram sitt ting som de andra. Han står som i ett hemligt förbund med något som är annat och som är större än han själv.
   Det är med vördnad han håller fram detta. Att han håller det man inte kan äga och inte kan råda över. Han håller varsamt det heliga som man inte kan hålla.
   Det är mysterierna. Trans-
   formationerna.
   Man färdas inåt, nedåt, bakåt.
   Björnen i riten
som gränsgångaren mellan nattens och dagens världar. Den som tog sig emellan. En vägvisare till underjorden, in i det okända, där vi människor rör oss som blinda.
   Man förnimmer i den unge slaktarens händer, att det är allt detta som han håller.
   Björnskallen lysande vit. Kokad. Skurad. Renad från all tid. Alla hinnor.
   Frågan återkommer: ja, vad gör vi här?

Elisabeth Rynell

Umeå Autumn Light festival
19th - 29th of November 2010
You never say that you love me…….
Short texts by Agneta Klingspor, Edith Södergran, Kerstin Thorvall, Tove Jansson, Karin Boye, Olle Adolphsson at a central parking lot.

Umeå Autumn light festival
20th - 27th of November 2009
All lights on you!
Toghether with Gerd Aurell as a part of the project Portraits in a Painted Landscape. People could e-mail or mms photos of themselves in front of the background painting and these photos were projected on a big screen in the park next to the painting.

Umeå Autumn Light festival
17th - 25th of November 2005
Meeting Spots
Together with Karin Frennesson Westblad.
250 stumps painted with blacklight colour were put in eight different groups along the main road from the railway station to the old city hall. The idea was to invite people to walk in new directions or have a coffee break, but also a to remind us of the forest industry.

Umedalen Skulptur 2002

In the Swedish artist Helena Wikström’s Remember to Respect Your Mother, we see a different strategy unfolding. The glass mosaic is halfway buried into the ground in a way that opens up a sequenceof contrast and oppositions to the surrounding landscape in terms of form and shape. The work itself consists of red and white chequers imitating a pattern that often is seen on chaperons used by Swedish housewives in their kitchens. Wikstöm has earlier worked with themes alluding to women’s experiences in society, and with Remember to Respect Your Mother she succeeds in a moving way to extol the incessant work of allour mothers, all that work ‘that is never done,’ as the saying goes. The humble outlines of her piece, hardly visible until you come close, underlines that aspect even further.

Eric van der Heeg

umedalen skulptur 2002

Storsjöskolan, Holmsund 2012
together with Gerd Aurell

Hopp in swedish means jump but it also has another meaning and that is hope. For this work we were invited to create something together with the children for a niche in the corridor between the school and the library. We talked to them about jump and hope and they all described a jump that they once had done which they remembered well.

Föllinge Allaktivitetshall, Krokoms kommun 2011

 

Brännanskolan, Skellefteå Kommun 2005
together with Karin Frennesson Westblad

A typical high school built in the sixties where we were asked to improve the entrance and the school café area. We worked with light elements and a question of which masks we choose to show. It is also a play with the art history.