This time it started with the braid.
Humans have braided their hair for many thousands of years. The braid has carried with
it both social and symbolic meanings as well as hidden messages. Braiding can go
beyond hair, it is a technique of joining things together. New shapes can take form and
various things can be attached. The time-consuming act of braiding has in the
meantime given room for social interactions.
In this LandJewelry we started to braid nature itself; her grass, leaves, branches and
clay. The act of braiding became communication with nature, a try to care for our earth
and return some of our creative energy to her. We started to braid with our bodies. The
experimenting became playful. Our hair was entwined with grass, flax and clay.
Exploring the boundaries of body and nature. In this intuitive shared process play
became the method and nature as well as the own human bodies became the tool. The
play opened into a game with nature and with one another — a return to childhood, to
chasing and being chased. Like the oldest of children’s games, passed down through
generations across cultures, it had no real ending — only the endless turn from chaser
to chased, round and round, an unknown end we simply had to follow.
Do adult women get time to play freely without looking at the clock? Are we allowed to
play that we are someone else?
In this experience the braid has guided us forward. Our conversations have been voices
braided together. Our ideas and experiences have become entwined into creating
collective work.
In this exhibition you get a glimpse of this residency. Through photos and video you get
to take part of the process and the results. A local craftsman carried out sand casting at
location and made it possible to turn grass into brass so that some of the elements of
transient nature gets to turn into a treasure for the future to come.
LandJewelry is an ongoing collaborative art initiative where jewelry artists create
temporary land art or landjewelry using natural materials found directly on-site. This was
the third time for LandJewelry and the first time in Lithuania. On July 27th to August 2nd
in the village of Bajorai (Rokiškis district) six LandJewelry artists participated; Maja
Breife (SE), Aino-Astrid Gaedtke (DE), Ingrid Berg (SE), Karina Kazlauskaitė (LT), Anna
Pettersson (SE) & Kajsa Wickström (SE).
This residency was self-funded and self-organized by the participating artists.
The works are presented not as individual authored pieces, but as a collective creation
of the L.J. group.
