LED light installation by Meri Ekola - Finland
Location: City park in Kattviken
Partner: Arvika Municipality
‘We humans are trapped in an endless loop of continuous need for growth. We strive to expand in every way without awareness of the destruction we create. In the work ‘Infinity’, when the water is still, the shapes on the water surface repeat as a perfect mirror image, but as soon as a slight wind blows and waves are created, the image is distorted. Like this image, our existence is only the result of appropriate circumstances. Something so fragile is impossible to preserve forever. A fragile harmony that we are constantly trying to reach but remains a utopia.’
Meri Ekola uses light as her main medium of expression. She works with installations as well as within the broad field of performing arts. She holds an M.A degree in Lighting Design from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and currently lives in Brussels.
Video projection by Marjan Laaper - Netherlands
Location: Hantverksgatan 1-3
Partner: Red Cross
Between the sharp pins of a barbed wire, a caterpillar has made its cocoon. The film shows the whole process of the butterfly emerging and developing its wings. The fragility of the butterfly contrasts with the sharp wire, but the butterfly emerging from its cocoon also refers to freedom and the possibility of change.
Marjan Laaper, (1971) was educated at the Willem De Kooning Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. She was further educated at Maryland College of Art, Baltimore, USA and Rijksakademie Amsterdam, NL. She specialises in large-scale video projections, installations and public art commissions. In her work there is a tension between contradictory subjects and symbols, such as beauty and danger, the intangible and the transient, trust and anxiety.
Video of Marjan Laaper - The Netherlands
Location: Kyrkogatan 21
In the film ‘A Sense of Wonder’, an 18th-century Chinese porcelain statue of a female figure looks at a snail on her hand. There is a strong contrast between the living animal and the static sculpture. The theme of wonder can be recognised in both the sculpture and the exploring snail. They seem to form their own little universe to be explored and discovered. At the same time, they glorify the past and the connection that man and nature can have.
Marjan Laaper, (1971) was educated at the Willem De Kooning Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. She was further educated at Maryland College of Art, Baltimore, USA and Rijksakademie Amsterdam, NL. She specialises in large-scale video projections, installations and public art commissions.
LED light installation by Lin de Mol - Netherlands
Location: Kyrkviken - Arvika Harbour
Partner: Arvika Municipality
Two suitcases stand on a lonely jetty overlooking the water. Lit from within, they look as if they have been used by someone, as their contents bulge their shape. A suitcase lasts a lifetime, the things we collect, are the things we remember. We try to hold on to these things, especially when we lose our home and when it is uncertain where our future lies. Our time now, they change. Standing at this point in time, we can see where we are going and it is not such a pretty picture. We won't be as free to go anywhere as before, and we will have to go on a deeper, more spiritual journey to find a light within ourselves.
Lin de Mol, born 1966, was educated at the Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She has lived in New York, Los Angeles, Dublin and Antwerp and has exhibited internationally since 1996. Since 2014 she lives in Värmland.
Video projection by Lovisa Ringborg - Sweden
Location: Köpmangatan 2
Partner: Westra Wermlands Sparbank
The video moves slowly in an organic flow, slowly forming figures that are up to the viewer to interpret. The work can be seen as a moving Rorschach test if you like. Sound and image together create a sense of water and space. The recurring pulse in the soundtrack can bring to mind a heartbeat or a pulsating jellyfish.
Lovisa Ringborg, (1979) is a Swedish photographer living in Stockholm. Ringborg studied at the School of Photography in Gothenburg and is active both in Sweden and abroad. Her work consists of photographs, video installations and sculptures. The claustrophobic atmosphere is characteristic of Lovisa Ringborg's visual world, which is built up in the borderland between fantasy and reality.
Multi-media video installation by Josefine Åhs Lagerberg & Ulf Lagerberg-Sweden
Location: Magasinsgatan 8
Partner: Tickster
‘Echoes of an exploratory process.
Do you hear what I hear? Do you see what I see?
Fragments from an inner journey through life, where feelings and thoughts take shape in subtle layers between step and pause.’
Josefin Åhs Lagerberg (artist, b. 1992 Gothenburg) works with themes of belonging and identity.
Ulf Lagerberg (musician, born 1952 Gothenburg) works with sounds and moods.
In the multimedia installation ‘Reverberation’, they have collaborated to touch different senses that can wander further in the viewer.