Lina Söderberg

I am wandering through the seasons looking for experiences. Some are fragments of summer that I have collected carefully and dried under pressure of my heaviest books. The landscape itself plays an important part in my process and the bodily movement through unstructured places is crucial. To really reach a place, it might be necessary to do so by foot. The material itself has grown unknowing of human purpose, beside the value of the common scale.

By turning space into place I am creating a membrane between inclusion and exterior. I want to find a passage through the present with a framing of welded iron rods, and I need to be sensitive to the essence of the materials. The found material and the iron both have their own voices. The collected material speaks of fragility and the heartbeats of seasons, of weightlessness engulfed by air. Its fragility makes it reluctant, unwilling to bend to my will. The iron weaving is long lasting and cooperative, resisting gravity to support any idea I might suggest. My work is to make them speak the same language.

With this project I want to investigate my relationship to these different materials and to see if my work can make me perceive their value in different ways. Is it possible to use a material like dried leaves as a precious building material, and still stay true to its essence? Can metal with its reference to human innovation and skill of the hand give the collected material a name in the shape of form?