Left: Selvportræt Ravhjerte #2 / Self Portrait Amber Heart #2 (2018). Pigment on print, Museum. 47,4 x 34 cm. Edition of 5.
Right: Lulu Ravhjerte / Lulu Amber Heart (2019), Pigment on print, Museum. 47,4 x 34 cm. Edition of 5.
Tidsrum / Spaces of Time (2018). Cardboard, amber, wood, glass vial. 19,7 x 19,7 x 5,7 cm.
Ravhjerte / Amberheart (2018). Video. 3,03 minutes.
Selvportræt Ravhjerte #1 / Self Portrait Amber Heart #1 (2018). Pigment on print, Museum. 31 x 23 cm. Edition of 5.
To feel what it really was (2018). Cardboard, pigment on print, resin. 42,2 x 29 x 3,5 cm.
Words
My mother and my grandmother have collected the small pieces of amber and wood in the grey box (Tidsrum 2018 / Spaces of Time 2018) and as the two of them are no longer alive, of course these objects represent a great personal value to me.
For a long time I have felt an urge to do something with these objects, but did not know exactly what that something was. For several years, along with that sensation, I have been intrigued by the forest, and particularly by old, rotting trees and the mix of decay and new life which one can witness in the forest.
During my wanderings in the woods I have often halted beside a tree filled with big lumps of resin, and they fascinated me enormously. I wanted to touch the resin, wanted to explore it and to feel what it really was.
One day I brought with me the pieces of amber, holding one of them close to the resin embedded in the tree, and it so happened that the sunrays passed through the treetops and the leaves and hit the resin and the amber, making them glow like fiery stars. This was a magical experience. In a flash I found myself in a special moment, in a wild and intense meeting of all those millions of years already passed and those that may come to be in the future. Here I stood in a tiny fragile instant of time - merely a flicker - like such that oftentimes pass unnoticed.
Pondering over the short span of time that makes up my own life as compared to the millions of years that life has existed on earth, my space of time could seem insignificant. It is coming to an end some day, and then what? What happens to someone’s space of time when it ends?
In the grey box (Tidsrum 2018 / Spaces of Time 2018) I have put fragments of my mother’s and my grandmother’s spaces of time, and I have added a bit of my own space - the glass vial holding little pieces of amber which I, myself, collected as a child. This way, metaphorically, the spaces of time melt together, and in some way allowing the individual spaces of time to be extended.
Ravhjerte (Amber heart) deals with time. Sometimes it moves fast, and I cannot stop it. At other times it slows down, and one may feel chained in one’s space. Or one may be dancing happily about, and some day, of course, it all comes to an end. One day we are just not here anymore, and until then each of us is confined to this tiny space of time into which we were born.