REFLECTIONS OF LIFE – The Art of Sandra Ikse and Gunwor Nordström
When compared with the millenia required to realize the world’s great treasures of prehistoric cave paintings and ancient woven pictures, the thirty years’ taken to produce a body of contemporary tapestry art is an altogether brief period of time. Yet thirty years is precisely the period of time that the exhibition ”Reflections of Life” ecompasses. Not coincidentally,
it also represents the length of time during which I have followed the artistic development of artists Sandra Ikse and Gunwor Nordström. Their artistic careers blossomed during the 1970s - an expansive period in Sweden for the expression of social criticism in the arts overall and an especially important decade for the development of contemporary textile art expression in particular. It also marked the era in which Swedish textile artists were extended equal membership rights for the first time in the KRO, the National Association of Artists. Theoretically, from that time on, textile art was supposed to be accepted as an aesthetic equal to painting, an ideal which even today has not yet been fully realized.
At the same time as Sandra and Gunwor were receiving a very solid education in the arts, they also had responsibility for their families and children. They often worked on their tapestry weavings at night, a period of relative peace in the home.Young and energetic at the time, they both wanted to change the world. And they considered textile art expression an important weapon in the struggle for global justice.
During the 1975 ”Year of the Woman” celebrations in Sweden, the exhibition ”Reality leaves its marks” (Verkligheten sätter spår) drew much attention and represented a real breakthrough for participants Ikse and Nordström. Originating in Gothenburg, the group show travelled on to Stockholm and Umeå. In addition to Sandra and Gunwor, participating artists included Elsa Agélii, Inga Björstedt, Aja Eriksson, Bibi Lovell and Ingalill Sjöblom. All together, they created a kind of ”touring atelier”, where visitors were invited to presentations at each exhibition venue. A great success, the event broke all attendance records at Stockholm’s Kulturhus/ House of Culture, with 56,000 viewers during its two-month stay.
Sandra Ikse
After completing her education in textile art, Sandra Ikse began to study sculpture at Valand College of Art in Gothenburg. But it was as a tapestry artist that she established her reputation with such works as ”Madonna and Child in front of a High-Rise Apartment”, ”Tiger cage – Woman in Vietnam”, ”Madame Thi Bihn” and ”Woman from the Third World/Africa”. These tapestries were also exhibited in Mexico, Canada, Cuba and in Paris. Technically these pieces incorporated a variety of traditional weaving patterns – twill and rosepath – interspersed here and there with effects of knotted pile. It was an effect that admirers of the flat French gobelin surfaces had difficulty in accepting. However, it was precisely through this radical reinterpretation of traditional methods that Ikse’s work helped to spark a genuine artistic renewal of expressive medium.
In the summer of 1976, personal tragedy hit Sandra with the drowning death of her four year-old son, Lucas. The impact of the accident caused the artist to lose her foothold.
The powerful tapestry ”I Want to Choose Life” (1977, Borås Art Museum), demonstrates
her active engagement in the grieving process. Representations of family ties are surrounded by imprints of the little boy´s hands, which in turn form a kind of crown of thorns about the mother´s head. Other events in Ikse’s life caused the artist to question her existence. It is a question she expresses herself in the tapestry entitled ”I am holding my bleeding heart in my hand and shape it.” In a monumental work -- almost four meters in length -- ”The Birth” (1981) -- the artist’s vulnerability is expressed in an airy, partly transparent weave. A woven umbilical cord connects a series of fetuses, ultimately terminating in a central heart shape. This tapestry was displayed in several museums in the United States, before it was finally purchased by Gothenburg Art Museum, as the first work of contemporary textile art expression in its collection.
As part of a commission to create an artwork for a waiting room at the Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, Ikse wove four portraits of female writers whose own lives proved fateful: Victoria Benedictsson, Karin Boye, Moa Martinson and Edith Södergran (1977-1979).
The artist’s intention was that the tapestries should inspire the visitors to read these authors´works, copies of which were available in the hospital’s waiting room. Unfortunately, three of the series’ panels were stolen; today, only the depiction of Edith Södergran remains.
Perhaps, letting the pain ”catch hold of itself” may also move one to consider the importance of survival. ”In Memory of Anne Frank” (1985) became a symbol of a strong personality whose spirit lives on, offering consolation even in the midst of despair. Following its exhibition at Düsseldorf ’s Stadtmuseum, the Frank piece was acquired for the museum’s collection thanks to the generosity of several Swedish firms. In this action, a number of significant threads were joined together. The Museum had already owned a considerable collection of Jewish childrens´drawings from concentration camps. Furthermore, Germany was the country of Sandra’s birth, her parents having escaped their native Latvia following World War II.
In 1991 Sandra Ikse received Swedish government stipend support which enabled her to begin to paint, a long-held dream of hers. Four years later she made her debut with a series of paintings shown at Gallery Doktor Glas in Stockholm. To plunge into ”deep water” may appear to be a true necessity if one is to get closer to one´s innermost being, to realize fully what one is capable of creating. In Sandra’s case, she had become an artist against her father´s will. This rebellion against her authoritarian upbringing precipitated a life-long struggle — one which only gradually lead to ultimate reconciliation.
Sandra’s painting gave birth in turn to the urge to create a series of textiles in mixed media, involving elements of screen printing and free embroidery. There is an obvious duality here, a tension between passion and exposure, revealed in these pictures. ”After the hunt” (1993) depicts a group of gentlemen in a lounge, with embroidered outlines of womens´ bodies and
a breast depicted as their ”trophy.” While looking at the ”Sleeping Beauty in the so-called ”wished, forgotten and remembered” room” (1991-1993), the viewer is confronted with double, divided faces, scarred by stitches and hollow-eyed glazing. The picture ”breathes”
a sense of merciless nakedness and is deeply touching. The contemporary work ”In deep waters”, where the past seems to be swept over by painted, intense blue fields, anticipates
an opening towards the light. It is a quest which in turn yields to a recognition of the healing power of nature.
In 2003 Sandra Ikse was elected honorary Doctor of the Faculty of Art, at Gothenburg University. A loom now awaits her in her new atelier – ”an oasis, after having my head turned by painting”, according to Ikse. The conjunction of two extremes which enrich each other and create new challenges.
Gunwor Nordström
”The Devil in the Sky lets the Bombs Fall” is a tapestry depiction of the former U.S. president Richard Nixon, woven by Nordström in 1972. This relatively small work nevertheless sparked a great deal of controversy at the time. Featured in the exhibition ”Humanity in Weaving”, the piece was criticized for being contrary to tact and good manners, not to mention tradition. Actually, the aesthetic forerunner to this work was a piece by the Swedish-Norwegian textile artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970)entitled ”Blood in the Grass – the Vietnam Tapestry” (1966). In the latter work, President Lyndon B Johnson is shown lifting his dog by the ears, while at the same moment bombs continued to fall over Vietnam.
It was only in the 1970´s that Ryggen’s work actually began to attract a following. As a student at Valand College of Art in Gothenburg, Gunwor was encouraged in her exploration of tapestry weaving by her professor, Peter Dahl. ”One should choose the material closest to one´s heart and then try to make something damned great out of it!”, was his opinion.
During her early years, Nordström wove realistic depictions of scenes from everyday life in such pieces as ”Working companions”, ”Morning”, ”Cleaning woman” and ”Stone cutter”. These forms were familiar to her, given her roots in a region with numerous textile factories and its nearby coast with an abundance of stone quarries.In these pieces, she has managed to carve a deeper perspective with tones expertly realized in the rendering of both textile draping and in the cut stones.
A study year in France prompted the creation of ”descriptions” of her little son Jakob and his alienation. In time she involved herself in writing and teaching. Prehistoric cave-paintings became a permanent source of fascination and a source of inspiration to several art pieces. Likewise, prehistoric mammoth relics in museum collections offered their own special magic, resulting in two exhibitions ”The farewell of the mammoth” and ”The return of the mammoth”. In this respect, Gunwor worked with motifs from nature, particularly stone and rocks – not only in thick woollen yarn, but also in sensual reliefs expressed in works involving handmade paper and gauze fabric, covered with acrylic paint.
During the period 1977-1985 Gunwor wove eight expressive tapestries, depicting the struggle for freedom against apartheid in South Africa. The largest of them – ”Funeral procession in crossfire” – representing an African face and a crowd of people guarded by police is woven of plant dyed brown wool from Botswana. The picture is surrounded by barbed wire and a broad cross shape. African yarn is also used in ”Warmth of birds´wings” (1991), a tapestry, woven at a time of crisis for the artist. Wings with feathers, which earlier have occured in the extensive series ”Fragments”, are depicted here as protectively closed. From the dark earth spring forth new branches, ”trees of life”, suggesting new hope. Here the strength of the textile medium has reached its fullest expression in a rich variety of surface textures.
With ”Warmth of Birds´Wings” Gunwor represented Sweden in Paris in 1991 at ”Magie de la Tapisserie” / ”The Magic of Tapestry”, an important international exhibition of woven art. A few years later she took part in a similar exhibition in Beauvais. In the installation ”The Process of Life” (1995-2000) the visitor was taken in to a golden, illuminated room of soft chenilles, neon pillars and mirrors. Here, time and space unite. In the triptych ”Demeter´s Timeless Wandering” (2000) Gunwor combined abstract, tactile surfaces with a woman´s portrait. An antique Greek myth about the changing of seasons – the simultaneous germinating both under and above ground is combined here with personal memories of her own childhood and significant moments from womens´history. This artwork is now displayed at the entrance of Gällinge School, Kungsbacka municipality.
The widely discussed art project ”Bird of Paradise – Encounter with the Universal” was realized by Gunwor at the Art Museum of Gothenburg in 2002. It dealt with the creative process over time and through children’s pictures. Myth, music and masterpieces of painting served as stimulating guides; pleasure and satifsaction in one’s work were accompanying motifs.
Once again, Nordström has just thrown herself into at the loom in the realization of a more recent and considerably darker series of works involving scenes from the war in Iraq.
The magnificence of the ancient culture of the ”land of the two rivers” is juxtaposed against depictions of the degrading torture in the Abu-Ghraib prison. Parallels can be drawn here with the current Nobel price winner Elfriede Jelinek´s Bambiland. Artists, apparently unbeknownst to each other, have set new groundwork in the fight for life and human dignity.
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