> from water you come <
HISTORY 2004
• I am drawn to water and have studied it in many aspects — concretely, symbolically, and as a concept. Physically, as stillness or movement that flows, ripples, gushes, or mirrors. Water — the movable and mutable, a floating counterpart to light. The origin and demise of all things.
• The project WATER has its origin in the preoccupation and in the idea of creating a kind of picture book at the intersection of water and place — each day for 4 months its own physical water. The diary-like form invited immediate presence, while the duration — 4 months — invited a stubborn immersion. Establishing this well-defined frame, where the focus along the way is process-oriented, has proven to be inspiring for me. WATER was created by, every single day for 4 months, finding “the day’s water,” exploring it photographically, and selecting one photo. It could be seawater, drinking water, amniotic fluid, etc. It could be the place’s appearance through reflections. It could be the place filtered through water, the personal or remembered water.
• And daily new questions opened up. What is water? A transparent, liquid substance through which one looks as through a lens. Or is it defined by its container, by the weather, by the light. How much is enough? A drop, an ocean. It was an intuitive process, a dialogue with the element itself. After the collection, I paused. How should the work unfold? The photographs were packed away and stored in the attic.
• I began the collection on July 25, 2004, and the photographic part concludes on November 22, 2004.
ART BOOK PROJECT 2024-2025
• When I got my very first studio, at Den Blå Hest, Aarhus, in November 2023, I decided that I would not simply move all my boxes there, but take one box at a time. When I looked into the first, I could see a lot of photos — water photos. I hung all 121 photos on the studio wall, and during that process I discovered that the images require words, stories, moods — and that it should become a book, “From Water You Have Come” — so I wrote a text for each photo. Water is a fundamental condition. We are born of it, shaped by it, live with it.
• Text and image relate to one another, illuminate and expand the concepts: transparency, transformation, and mirroring through poetry and the images. I work with contrasts: stillness/movement, conscious/subconscious, memory/forgetting, life/death. The texts are created day by day and end with 121 water/text images.
• In the summer of 2025 the book is ready for publication. The book will be released for my solo exhibition “A Home Is a House You Leave” at Kunstpakhuset in Ikast in November 2025.
*
is this where it all stems from?
The world and the present.
Can you hear it,
for the sea,
again and again,
floods you and withdraws.
I have talked with you
in long, creeping nights
here on the edge of white earth.
It has left me dizzy
from the oxygen-rich scent,
and you,
who always pull away
from me
It is from Ireland, where I discovered this reflection of the sky, and when I was about to photograph it, a cloud moved in front of the sun, or a gust of wind came, so most of a forenoon passed before sun and wind lined up. We were in Ireland because he was to create an installation, and I was along again. It feels like ages ago. I think it was September, and I, as usual, didn’t know what I was supposed to do there, and that’s how it was every time I joined him on his art projects.
The following books have helped me along the way:
I Write to See — Christian Dotremont
Only the Voice Remains — Forugh Farrokhzad
Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart — Rainer Maria Rilke
Thoughts Without Language — Francis Picabia (1919)
Dictionary of the Danish Language — (no single author listed)
A Trance — Yoko Ono
Haiku — Hans-Jørgen Nielsen
Sappho — Mette Mostrup
Alphabet — Inger Christensen
This Connection Between All With Lungs — Juliana Spahr
The Price of Shadows — Junichiro Tanizaki
The Danish Concept Dictionary — (no single author listed)
Word Book — Astrid Gjesing