To hold, to carry was an installation for the group show FORCES, held at MATTER - house of crafts, on the island of Bornholm (DK). The work was activated at the opening, through a performance. I walked down to the harbour, next to the exhibition space, and gathered water to go inside again and suspend the containers.
I feel we have lost touch with our fundamental needs, such as the basics around bringing water to our home, and what water means. Water, gas and electricity are transported into our homes through intricate systems, while we order goods over the Internet. In the same way, I feel that in our everyday life, we are quite cut off from our history. The work that was put into the soil is forgotten. The work our ancestors have done with their bodies, is forgotten, and we seldom take our own long history into account.
Humans have created all kinds of containers, to transport water from the well to our mouths. The ceramic field has developed out of this basic need, and this need is still present today. We need containers that can keep water from running towards the centre of the earth.
The yoke is an object symbolizing a burden, or inheritance. We no longer use it in Scandinavia, but it is not that long ago, that it was an essential tool in our everyday lives. The yoke in this artwork was my grandmother’s yoke, which she used to carry milk. She was born and lived all her life in the inland in northern Sweden. My father has mentioned that she wanted to see the ocean, but that it could hardly be done under the circumstances they lived in. The water used for the work is taken from the Baltic Sea, just outside the exhibition space at the opening. I wonder what my grandmother would have thought if she knew how the journey of the yoke, and the journey of her family, has been through the last 40 years.
