Lähikuva Camilla Edström Ödemarkin puusta tehdystä teoksesta.
Wooden sculpture that studies the anatomy of the mouth. Photo: Camilla Edström Ödemark.

Camilla Edström Ödemark Transformers

30.9.–23.10.2022

Through a new series of sculptures made especially for Galleria Sculptor, the exhibition explores processes that questions the autonomy and integrity of bodies.

The artistic practice of Edström Ödemark focuses on borderlands where two material or theoretical bodies intertwine. These areas can be regarded as a neither-nor; a potential and a rupture from the limits of dichotomy. As a central idea, the term transcorporality emerges; a theory in which entities are link by a concurring movement into and through each other. We are sharing a sticky world, populated by porous bodies, where homes and origins can be determined based on foreign materials found inside of them; levels of minerals, toxins and industrially produced compounds tell us about where we come from and how we have travelled through our lives. Correspondingly we find continuous flows, exchanges and interactions between human and other-than-human bodies like microorganisms and parasites. Reality seems to ignore our human tendency to divide the world into opposites; into my body and yours, the organic and the nonorganic and into subject and object. Seamlessly everything comes together while humans primitively draw lines between black and white.

In “Transformers” Camilla Edström Ödemark uses the dark spaces of the digestive system and the anatomy of the mouth as motifs for sculptures in wood. The transformative power of the intestines opens up for a process which is both nurturing and destructive; a place where two compositions dissolve and merge. The survival of one body depends on the absorption of another, aided by a flora of microorganisms. Nevertheless, we still perceive our body as our own and with absolute integrity. The work of Edström Ödemark adresses the potentials of acknowledging a shared space; What happens with concepts as responsibility and coexistence when gazing into a transcorporal world?

The sculptures are made of rotten birch, still marked by the insects and the fungi that lived off of it. Long after the artist’s hands have left them, the works keep disintegrating and changing. The material is itself part of and subject to the story it wishes to tell.

The exhibition is made possible with the support of the Arts Promotion Center of Finland, Svenska Kulturfonden, and the Norwegian Cultural Council. A special thanks to Ove Nordström, Hammarhugg and Conny Häger, and Timmerhuset.

Camilla Edström Ödemark (b. 1985, Åland) graduated in 2020 from The Art Academy of Oslo, where she’s currently based. She earned a previous BFA from Konstfack, Stockholm. Her work has been shown at Gävleborgs Regional Museum (SE), Sinne, BOA (NO), Nitja Center for Contemporary Art (NO), Norwegian Sculptors’ Association (NO), Bærum Kunsthalle (NO), Kunsthalle Meken (SE) and OK Corral (DK) to name a few. Edström Ödemark has participated in a number of residency programs of which FAIR FABRIKKEN (2021) in Copenhagen is the most recent. Previously she was a part of the artist-driven gallery Galleri CC in Malmö, and since 2021 she is a teacher at the Art School of Stavanger.

Camilla Edström Ödemark will be holding guided tours:
in English, Saturday 1 October 2022 at 1 pm
in Swedish, Sunday 2 October 2022 at 1 pm

Videon toteutus: Pia Männikkö

Chamber Plague I-XIII, 2022. Photo: Aukusti Heinonen
Untitled, 2022. Photo: Aukusti Heinonen
Photo: Aukusti Heinonen

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