HER STORY – Origins

(formerly HER STORY – The Exhibition)

 

The Question

This was where HER STORY began.

The project started with four women from my own family.

I wanted to understand how their lives, often lived quietly and in service of others, had shaped my own. Rather than retelling their biographies, I asked how their stories could be carried into the present through art.

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The Work

HER STORY – Origins brings together sculptural dresses, photography, film and painting. Each dress is created from materials connected to one woman's life. Rather than illustrating history, the materials become a way of carrying memory into the present.

 

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The Materials

One dress is made from letters of recommendation written while working as a maid in New York between 1906 and 1909.

Another incorporates dishcloths and dried beans, recalling a woman who raised five children alone while working as a cleaner.

Crocheted doilies and cigarette papers speak of another woman's fragile life.

Canvas, lead and acrylic paint recall the great-grandmother who died at thirty-one after years of radiation treatment.

Each material carries both an individual history and a wider story about women's lives.

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Embodiment

The dresses were built so that I could wear them myself.

Through photography and film I returned to places where these women had once lived and worked, allowing my own body to become a meeting place between past and present.

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Installation

Within each sculptural dress, hundreds of red origami birds gather and rise. They suggest movement rather than stillness.

Presence rather than absence. Lives that continue to resonate.

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Premiere

Linneanum, Botanical Garden, Uppsala University (2021)

Subsequent exhibitions:

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• Gasklockan, Gävle (2022)

• Enköpings konsthall (2023)

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What began with four women from my own family gradually grew into HER STORY — an ongoing artistic practice exploring women's lives through many different forms.​

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HER STORY the overview →