OCH OM JAG DÖR,
DÖR JAG ÅTMINSTONE
/
AND IF I DIE AT LEAST I DIE
2019
Embrodery, steel frame
Two pieces of 245cm X 145cm each.
Exhibited at Rundgang, The Royal Danish Academy of art (2019) and Opgør, Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2020)
The piece is based on 40 death notice from the Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter". Each death notice is published between the years of 2016 and 2019, and each person's age varies from 14 to 44 years old. The common thread in the work is that each death has been in the form of a suicide. Some death notice tell us a lot, and some tell us almost nothing and they are all anonymous. The only thing that can be understood from the work is that someone has died and that they were loved by someone. The death notice are transformed from being written in the newspaper to being embroidered in the work. This change from paper to textile embodies ideas of reverence and processing. The slow craftwork contrasts the quickness and brutality of the death itself.
Many of the texts in the death notice have an essence of desperation. They tell of the relatives, who in desperation try to understand and process something, and find the perfect last words. They are similar to one another, repeating words such as "loved", "why" and "missing".
Through the sheer amount of death notice, twinned with the large scale size of the piece, the work creates a memorial to all those who died and did not receive a memorial erected over them. It is a monument to the tragedy that a monument was never erected over.
The piece therefore forms a contemporary monument over a tragedy that kills young people every day. It acts as a comment to politicians that do not do enough to change this and instead turn a blind eye to the most common cause of death among young people. It is also a reminder of a capitalist society where the weakest lives have no value. But perhaps most of all, it is a work of art that wishes to give comfort to the relatives, and to the people who have suffered the tragic loss of someone. It is for all the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, partners, friends, sons and daughters. It is to all the thousands who read the death notice of their loved ones in the newspapers every day.