“Fifty – Fifty” is a performative photo series with reflections on being in the middle of life and plays on a number of puns; – about sharing equally, being in balance, that life can be a bit of both, as well as questions about gender and equality.
At the same time, the project metaphorically refers to the “meat scale”, and questions whether you, as a woman in the middle of life, are still weighed and found wanting.
Or have you finally become heavy enough, – and if so, heavy enough for what?
The project shows images of a body trying to find balance, where a vulnerability is revealed. In a quietly humorous way, the project comments on both my own and society’s ambivalence towards a female body that ages; – older women’s bodies are less often present in society, women in the middle of life often experience being in the “invisible age”.
Women all over the world are also experiencing neo-conservative attitudes, where rights that we especially in the Nordics may take for granted are once again curtailed.
How does today’s polarized debates affect today’s girls who, in a few years’ time, will become the next generation of well-grown women?
The choice of print on textile is deliberate, both because the textile has its own ability to enhance the skin’s quality and sensibility in the reproduced print, but also because the soft movement in the textile reinforces the body’s fragile balance hanging on the yellow load strap. Textiles are closely linked to women and women’s work, – the use of textile with a slightly larger format than a bed sheet gives an extra dimension to the work.
Display options:
The textile images can be displayed individually, two as a pair, or several in series, up to all five. They can be hung directly on the wall, or more freely with a spacer. They can hang from the ceiling, be mounted spatially, e.g. back to back in a rack / scaffolding etc. They can themselves form a room, or be room dividers in the room.
Excerpts from an intervju with Suboart Magazine no 32, November 2024 >>
Part of a larger theme; Uneven States of Horizontality