For my sisters, my mothers, my daughters
This is For my sisters, my mothers, my daughters (2023). It’s made with acrylic on canvas, and measures 120 x 100 cm, and is the biggest painting I’ve made so far. I made it for my first exhibition, I Make Stuff About Me (2023), and it’s a painting that I will keep.
The painting named my unsanctioned art practice, Matriarkatet - The Matriarchy. I started work on this painting at the same time I had decided to start using my old journal pages for paste-ups, and at the same time I was thinking a lot about what expressions and messages in public space would help bring a society supporting the feminine into being. I needed a pseudonym, a moniker, and the concept of a matriarchy is something that has always had a presence in my life.
I grew up with strong female role-models, women in my family from my great-great-grandmothers has always held her own, and some of them well before the time it was common for a woman to be in charge. Sometimes when I tell people that I call my street work the matriarchy, they get a little quiet (“they” are always men by the way), before they act as if they are doing me a favour and warn me about the dangers of being too woke, believing that I am driven by a desire to replicate the patriarchy, assuming that I want women to oppress men. I always find that a bit funny, and sad, how so many outspoken male feminists when faced with having their patriarchal privilege challenged, acts as if it’s not, but in stead tries to cloak their emotional reactions as rationality. It reveals how difficult it is to let go of this system, and how scared people are, unable to even imagine that things could be different.
And that’s precisely why I chose the name. Not because I want women to rule over men. Not because I want to be the oppressor instead of the oppressed. But because I want all of us to be free. Men and women, and all genders. I don’t want to be like a man, meaning this cultural concept of what a man should be. I’m not sure most men want that either, to be honest. And I don’t want to try and fit in to whatever this idea of what a woman should be to be qualified as one either in the current state of the world.
I believe that we can create another way to be together.
In this painting, there are three female characters, representing the past, the present, and the future. The grey haired woman represents growing old, and the past. She has an owl on her shoulder, symbolizing wisdom and my family name. She, and the animals are all looking back at us, while the woman and the girl have locked their eyes elsewhere. Because she and nature knows something about this life and this world, that we need to hear.
The woman with black hair represents the present. Wrapped around her is a two-headed snake, symbolizing life, death and rebirth. I struggled so much with painting this snake, it was all blue and I painted it again and again and again, but it didn't come out right, and I nearly gave up on this whole painting because of it, until I just said fuck it. And before I knew what I was doing, I just started to add the red and yellow, which could have destroyed everything. But it turned out to save the whole piece for me instead (#lifelesson).
On her shoulder, a chameleon, symbolizing transformation. In her hand, she holds a shea shell with water flowing out of it, representing sensuality, spirituality and our ability to create life.
The girl, I painted with bright green hair, just like the first leaves of spring. She is captivated by the hummingbirds, a messenger between the spirit world and the physical world. They are seen as a symbol of love, joy, and beauty, and I included them as a homage to the incredible artists I get to work with. I never went to art school, but I get an education watching them all work, and I am so grateful for that. The hummingbirds I’ve borrowed from Xenz, who is one of my favourite people to work with.
The butterflies are a symbol I return to. I just learned the other day that the final stage of their transformation is called imago, from latin, likeness, image. Here, they represent the element of air. The way I painted them was also as a homage to other artists, inspired by one of the methods of Øivin Horvei who I also really love working with. I have learned so much from watching how both Xenz and Øivin works with their murals, and how they build color and light. Their styles are completely different, but I try my best to pay attention to what every artist are doing, and understand their method, so that I hopefully may create my own.
They are standing in a field of peonies, one of my favorite flowers, that I also often use in my paintings. One of them is a little different, and when I was showing this painting, I loved it when people all of a sudden discovered the brain in one of them. Representing here the wisdom of the earth, symbolizing how it holds an intelligence of its own, and that we are connected to it. The water from the seashell is nurturing it, and natures knowledge is in turn supporting the continued cycle of life, with a past, a present and a future. And finally, the sun, representing fire, completing the circle of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire.
I struggled with this canvas for a long time, making the first sketch on it on December 5th in 2021, and completing it January 4th in 2023, more than two years later and only just in time for the exhibition that I was opening a few days later on January 13th. I feel proud of the commitment this painting represents to me, all the hours I’ve put into it, so many of them just looking at it, trying to understand what I was supposed to do with it. I was so angry with it at times, it was like we were fighting each other. In the end, it was the painting that beat me, and not me who conquered the canvas. I had to surrender to it.
I feel proud that I had the courage to show it, and all the other stuff that I had made, realizing that it didn’t really matter anymore what anyone else would think about it. Because I had done my absolute best. I had fucking fought every single piece of art that I had made, and if anyone else wanted to try and make me feel inadequate about it, I knew that each piece had already brought me to my knees. It wasn’t like I was holding anything back. So I was ok with not being as good as other people, and I was very much aware that sooooo many people were so much better at what they are doing than I was, but it just didnt’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Make your art. Learn as much as you can from the people who are better than you. All the other stuff is just noise, and ego.
I once had a friend tell me that I shouldn’t get comfortable staying only in rooms filled with people where I am the one who knows the most about something, but to always go looking for rooms filled with people where I am the one who knows the least. I am reminded of that advice often. I tell it to myself when I get scared and want to settle. Sometimes I am able to follow it, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes the chances I take will pan out, sometimes I fail miserably. I try to learn how to not make a big fuss about it either way. I’ll let you know how that goes (don’t hold your breath on that one).
Take a chance. Leave yourself bare. That dream, that hope, that long shot, practice believing in it enough to pursue it. Because right now, our very existence hangs in the balance, and we desperately need to nurture our ability to imagine.
Let your guard down, just for a moment.
What do you want?
Don’t worry about “how”. Just, allow yourself to dream for a little bit. And maybe tomorrow you can dream a little more, a little bigger. And then maybe, you will start to act in the direction of that dream, that hope. I have no idea what another world might look like, and how it needs to be organized, and all the practical problems, and so on. I don’t have all the answers, and I never will, because the world is simply too big for one person to understand. But I know that we can find them together, if we start believing that we can. I know with all my being that this, and this situation that we are in right now, is not the only way.
It’s not for nothing I have a tattoo of the word “dream” on my right arm, my dominant arm of creation.
If we can’t yet see it, it’s because it’s never existed before. Not because it’s impossible.