Emilia Sølvsten
I Came in Walking Backwards
2023
W139 Hosts, Amsterdam
Installation, workshop and reading at W139
Installation, workshop and reading at W139
Softened into Marble, Grew Warm
2023
Fe26 Residency, Greece
“Softened into Marble, Grew Warm” is an artwork that explores the often invisible labour involved in marble extraction and production. My starting point for this residency is at the Plyatres in Pyrgos Tinos, where women used to wash their laundry before the installation of electricity in 1967. Rather than viewing marble as a symbol of power and wealth, the project frames it as a crucial construction material that used to support the daily rhythm and activities of the self-sufficient community of Pyrgos.
The artwork is divided into three stages: first, I invited students from the School of Fine Art in Pyrgos to participate in a collective washing of the Plyatres, a traditional public laundry house, as a tribute to the maintenance of the architecture and the work done by the women of the village, inspired by the artwork and manifesto of maintenance art 1969 by Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Second, I cast the traditional Greek green soap, Arkadi, into the negative space of the washing troughs. This soap, traditionally used for handwashing clothes and blankets, is also perfect for cleaning marble surfaces and is, until this day, the most popular. Additionally, I infused the soap with rust-containing earth and powder from the old stone sorting machine used in the Agios Eleftherios, creating an aesthetic and scent that reflects the essence of the quarry. The final stage involved cutting the soap into pieces, distributing it to the audience, and inviting them to participate in collective handwashing at the quarry.
Workshop participants: Daphne Chatzilazarou, Christina Dara, Camille Cornillon, Paulina, Leonardos, Madelaine
Life vest for motion sickness
2022
NEVERNEVERLAND, Amsterdam
Live sculpture; 20 min massage session
You are invited to a 20 min motion sickness recovery session with me, Emilia as a facilitator.
Timeless, low – fi operating technology and touch are at the center of this work. By exploring the comfort and discomfort of the embrace, I wish to fuel important dialogues on the complex realities of human interaction and current forms of touch. Life vest for motion sickness, Pt. 1 replicates the feeling of being cared for.
Audiences temporarily hand their bodies to a part–human, part–machine process that induces the body into a state of relaxation to stabilize the system. Life vest for motion sickness, Pt. 1 is part of the ‘Subjects of intimate Transactions’ project and is a live installation that focuses on tactile surface experiences.
The work emerges from an exchange of non-direct touch between two bodies with the massage device as an interface. The wearables are made from a second-used massage devices and offer themselves as a facilitator and carrier of touch
To Whom Do the Luminous Eyes Belong?
2022
Sound sculpture (loop)
I natten fanger jeg dig med mine forlygter. Før du giver dig til kende i mørket, er du kropsløs, et dansende væv af lysende celler, som kaster sit lys tilbage mod mig som et spejl.
In the night, I catch you with my headlights. But, before you make yourself known in the darkness, you are disembodied, a dancing tissue of luminous cells that throw its light back at me like a mirror.
Choreographically, the work explores the presence of embodied sound and the dominance of staged light, changing the presence of the sculpture as you walk around it move closer or further away from it. The audience Is encouraged to investigate the multiple facets and appearances that unfold by movement, presence and patience.
Lorem est Maxi ︎︎︎
The Fear of the Scent of the Flower of the Cherry Tree
2022
Engraved wall-text:
At this moment, you experience a sense of presence, animated by something trembling, something alive - haunted by the conditioning of memory, brought to life, transformed, and transmitted in your encounter with the work.
A scientist conditioned a group of mice to fear the scent of cherry blossom by giving them an electric shock every time they were exposed to the smell. After the treatment, the mice were put together to breed. The offspring of these mice showed clear signs of fear when exposed to the scent of cherry blossom. This happened even though these mice had never been exposed to the effects of the electric shock in connection with the smell. The experiment showed not only the 1st generation but also future generations' fear of this specific scent. How many personal incidents do you carry with you that are not yours? I ask if my emotional and physical recalls of an experience do, in fact, belong to me?
Perhaps they belong to the collective for which we are responsible but are not to blame for their unannounced intrusion.
Choreography option 1. or 2.
2022
Choreography option 1. or 2. is a continuation of PET(S) and mediates how external health services, preparations and apps shape our experience of care and intimacy. The growing tendency of society’s commodification of human desires extends the relationships between humans and non-humans and substitutes the human touch to a certain extent. With Choreography option 1. or 2 I investigate how this intersectionality produces emotiona
attachments across and beyond our current notions of closeness and affection. The incorporated features of the massage objects in PET(S) reflect society’s systematic thinking and approach to body, health and healing. The features are here used as instructions for the choreography, reembodied by eight different performers as a way to reclaim self-stimulation of the enfleshed activity.
Lorem est Maxi ︎︎︎
PET(S)
2021
live performance installation
PET (S) is a choreographic installation work consisting of two sculptural pieces montaged together.
of massage pillows; their respective sound played from 2 speakers and video. The massage pillows
have an incorporated timer that determines the time for each performance—every 14 min the work
is switched on manually by the artist who stays in the exhibition during the entire showing period.
The work’s demands for observation and care call into question the power relationship between the
creator and the created, the domesticator and the domesticated.
Lorem est Maxi ︎︎︎
Rhythms of Soft Aggression
2021
A hymn is tongued in gibberish by Ms Bobby to the background tunes of singing dunes, accompanied by a mutated monstrous mutated tongue.
Rhythms of Soft Aggression’ is a poetic meeting point between two expressions for belongingness to a place. We find ourselves in a sculptural memory of the Moroccan desert landscape, which the artist visited back in 2017. Here, the performer invites us into her sensuous and rhythmic sound universe in her hymn dedicated to her hometown, Hong Kong.
Lorem est Maxi ︎︎︎
SOFT BONES COLLAPSE IN THE HEAT
2020
A live sculpture that transforms character and
appearance as the gelatin ice melts - changing
the sculpture’s body and substances.
The work examines how body fluids and substances change shape
and meaning when marketed and used for lifestyle purposes.
The work questions the process of conserving and cultivating bodies through. processing and uses gelatine as an example of society’s absurd and brutal enforcement of body transformation. Pulverised bones become the texture and shape of pudding that gets eaten and absorbed by another body.In reflection on the different stages of the’body’, the work focuses on how the gelatine sculptures change appearance over time, leaving behind traces from previous circumstances and adapting to appearing ones.The choreographic aspect of the work emphasises the longevity of these different stages of transformation, creating various attention points throughout the exhibition period. The work changed from aesthetically pleasing to rotten and smelly, apresence infiltrating the room and soaked up by the surfaces of the gallery space, revealing decay.
REAL_LIFE_PLAYER
2020
Project Real Life Player emerged during a residency in Nida, Lithuania, in 2019. The project consisted of 5 different role-plays created and performed unannounced in the Nida Dunes during the artist’s stay. The role-play was a framework for investigating spectatorship and live performance in public space. In addition, two of the role-plays were reenacted, documented, and installed as two separate video installations in Oslo.
Lorem est Maxi ︎︎︎
Wanna come over and have a look at my arm?
2020
RESILIENCE - 0.1
