A quiet hysterical Christmas exhibition in the spirit of recycling. This description sounds intriguing and so full of contradictions that I simply had to see it when I was in Leksand to visit the Christmas market with my penpal Lizzy. I especially like the word HYSTERICAL. In fact, this is never something we feel when we experience a Swedish Christmas. Christmas here is cozy and very traditional, but mostly not different.
To our surprise, the title says it all. It sparkles, shines and glows in Leksands Kulturhus. The artist and silversmith Karin Ferner embarks Christmas and all its attributes with a lot of humor, but also an underlying seriousness. She makes her own interpretations of all kind of re-used materials and creates suddenly new stories which are alienating. Old postcards transformed by using empty Santa Claus faces, portraits of a woman transformed in a weird (but beautiful) personality, gnomes and straw goats which are mummified (thus pronounced dead), an amazing clothing line for the purpose of becoming your own Christmas tree (we felt inspired to make one ourselves!), chandeliers in a new context full of cones and squirrels or with bright colors. For us: hysterical inspiration!
She clearly plays with artistic expression, crafts and inserts re-use in new forms. In her designs, old meets new and Sweden meets other worlds. The best description of her work I found in an earlier review of her work exhibited in Leksand “an exhibition of recycling of color, shape, feel and beauty with a new interpretation of the old Dalarna painters’ view that everything starts from Dalarna.”
Karin certainly has a message in her work as well. For this exhibition, she had been invited to do something with Swedish Christmas tradition. No one has hardly escaped that it is on the road again. Our Christmas trade has long been a sign of economic growth. Was there anyone who said that our society is heading towards collapse? There seemed to be a lack of money in any case. It’s like the Earth’s climate is nearing its end as we continue to consume us all the way to hell while singing Jingle bells.
Karin Ferner re-uses discarded materials she among other things finds in different garage sales. It’s an endless source for her and in this way she takes advantage of Dalarna’s cultural heritage. Every costume, piece of fabric or embroidery is the work of (mostly) women who have never had any status. Her art elevates and lifts them out of anonymity. It’s exciting to explore the amount of re-used fabrics, beads and Swedish patterns you find when you stand close to a Christmas dress.
It’s not often you find an artist who combines Dalarnas cultural heritage, folk art and makes it into something new and unique. Dalarnas development of art seems to have frozen in time it seems (at least to me). We already saw her jewelry once in the shop of ‘Dalarna’s museum’ in Falun and found these very special. If you are visiting us around December 2016 – 28 January 2017: enjoy that hysterical exhibition and get inspired.