Gallery

Selfhood is explored within my art, this is illustrated through the large acrylic paintings of figurative women, using myself as a model. As my body goes through the changes that come with aging, I have had to re-create who I am now as a women and as a mother. “Lilith” is a reflection of this god-awful perimenopausal epoch and is a self-portrait of me at this time. The story of Lilith comes from old Christian scriptures, she was Adam’s first wife. It is said that Lilith was made from the same soil as Adam, thus making them equal. When Lilith asserted her equality and refused to lie under Adam, she was banished from Eden for this disobedience. Lilith fled to the Red Sea wher she turned into a temptress, a breeder of demon spirites and killer of children in the night. (I can relate.) My body has decided, without my consent, to murder my ability to bear children and has killed my sense of womanhood to some extent, and much like Lilith, I feel the damnation. At the same time I recognize this damnation as a blessing, a rite of passage into the second act of my life. This is a journey of self-expression, celebrating the multifaceted layers of my identity, and embracing the beauty of growing older. I challenge my own ideas of beauty and aging, reclaiming agency over my image and my own being, reinventing myself in this process. My self-portraits recognize the complexity of a life lived, reflecting the experiences that shape who I am at this pivotal stage in my perimenopausal life. By baring myself both physically and emotionally, I allow you to witness the unapologetic celebration of my body at this time, free from constraints and expectations. These vibrant nudes serve as a declaration of self-acceptance and empowerment, going beyond ageist notions and affirming the vitality and vibrancy of life beyond youth.

Living in the in-between, a dualistic existence, gave birth to one of my painting concepts. In some of my works, I juxtapose my models with an image created by myself; a real image with an imagined one, so that two fields become one. Words from poems and images from original paintings have been projected and painted onto the bodies of my daughters, like tattoos that seep into their beings attempting to speak a new story. My artistry is a way to empower my daughters. Each painting shines a light on the stories shared between, with and for daughters and mothers. These stories can be transferred to a larger global context inviting others to think about the stories that our young girls carry with them in our societies today. So, I am not only a painter, but also a storyteller. Each painting is paired with a written narrative, a story that reveals something intimate and essential about my daughters: who they are, who they are becoming, and the quiet magic they hold within. These stories are modern day fairytales, that talk about those very personal issues that our young women are forced to face every day. They tell of a young womans search for courage, for voice, for beauty and imagination and I am sure that they echo the universal longing for all our daughters to be truly seen and understood. As a mother-artist, I feel an urgent responsiblity to preserve and pass on the knowledge of storytelling. In a world increasingly driven by noise and distraction, storytelling, especially through art, becomes a form of resistance, a grounding thread that connects past, present and future. My paintings of my daughters are not just visual objects; they are repositories of growth, of memory, identity and hope. They are a way of saying: “We were here, we lived, we loved and this is what it meant.”

My daughters are my primary source of inspiration. I am fascinated by the form, movement and the change of the female body. Movement and dance have always been fundamental in my life. As my father was an ethnomusicologist, much of my childhood was spent in the bush listening to the sounds of marimbas, mbiras, drums and song echoing into the expansive African night. The dust from the red soil slowly rising from the stomping of rhythmic feet felt so natural and normal to me but had you seen me in this childhood picture, you would have found it strange. A child born and grown up in a society that fully embraced and accepted her despite her visible difference was transcendent. I have always felt like an outsider and insider at the same time. I live in a constant state of foreign-ship and home is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. So, the African in me continued to flourish in Sweden, I found myself dancing as a child and dancing as a mother, and that spiritual DNA flourished and was passed on to my daughters, dance is simply part of our lives. As my daughters grew, I watched how they moved, how they held themselves, and their gift of being so aware of their bodies has inspired my art. I also witnessed my daughters’ struggle to fit in to their context, to fit into a society that was/is quite the opposite to how they were raised. They, like me, lived (and are living) a juxtaposed existence where the norms of their current society did not merge with those taught at home, thus creating a sense of cultural dissonance and loneliness. The confusion my daughters faced of seemingly looking like their peers, but not recognizing themselves in their peers, was difficult at times. Not until they grew older did my daughters speak out their appreciation of their difference in culture, thoughts, and actions. Today they carry their inner difference with pride.