SCANDINAVIA

YEAR: 2005.

GROUP EXHIBITION: »Konsthandverk 2005« arranged by Craft Sweden, Röda Sten Cultural Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden.

MATERIALS: Sweaters, carpet and wallpaper made from woolly fleece featuring serigraphic screenprints showing an ice flower motif. Foundry sheet-metal painted yellow, MDF, neon lighting, sound from ceilingmounted speakers, mirror, and iron rack.

The SCANDINAVIA installation is a corridor, modular by design and construction. The corridor is positioned outside the »Röda Sten« exhibition building in Gothenburg next to the Scandinavian Harbour. Up in the air, above the spot where the corridor has been erected,
the highway overpass leads up northwards to Norway.
The corridor is blocking the entrance to the actual exhibition space. It features two door-openings: entrance, exit and the other way around. Visitors are obliged to pass through the corridor in order to enter the building. The floor and walls on the inside of the corridor are covered with woolly fleece featuring serigraphic screenprints of
an ice flower. The ice flower motif originates from old Nordic knittingculture. The end-wall of the corridor features a mirror. Three woolly sweaters with printed ice-flower motifs hang in front of the mirror. From the ceiling, under the woollen wallpaper, 8 loudspeakers play muted background music: a composition consisting of a piece of piano music, a mixture of the national anthems of Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

SCANDINAVIA is a passage reconstructing themes from Scandinavian culture. The corridor displays Nordic artisanal tradition, popular Nordic themes and modernistic Scandinavian architecture as visual and architectural icons. The woolly sweaters are copies of the famous Icelandic sweater.
The corridor is positioned by Gothenburg’s Scandinavian
Harbour, under the highway overpass to Norway. In this harbour shipping traffic between Europe and Scandinavia intersects. Focus is on the micro/macro relation arising in the outdoor space under the bridge by the harbour as well as in the space inside the corridor, which is narrow and claustrophobic.
The place itself, the exterior outdoor space and the interior
space of the corridor thus question Nordic identity, here appearing as a static element, the interior space of which is narrow and difficult to pass through.

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