Delta Dreams
Installation, 2011
Deltas are the low landforms and islands sometimes formed at the mouths of rivers. They constantly shift and change as sediments are deposited and moved by the currents and tides. In Swedish the word delta also has another meaning: to participate and to attend. Are Deltas linked with Utopia? We would reply yes. Deltas are immensely fertile, providing everything a human society needs, and thus the potential to provide sites for a Utopic state. For this reason, deltas and rivers were key sites in human history, the development of agriculture, cities and writing. Critical for Utopia is the Swedish meaning of the word delta, to participate. Through Utopia we can imagine a society that in many ways differs from the one we have at hand.
In Delta Dreams we want to link two deltas that have a lot in common: the Ume River Delta and the Daugava River Delta outside Riga. The landing, serving as a reading-bench in the exhibition, is a copy of a wooden landing in the Ume delta. In the excursion to Bolderaja outside Riga we will bring along the photographs from our own delta and place them on the shore.
One delta visits another and if people can feel kinship and affinity maybe places can too?
Artists' Bios:
Gerd Aurell (b. 1965) is a visual artist, living and working in Umeå, Sweden. She spent her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada, but moved back to Sweden and was educated at the Umeå Art Academy (1988-94). Her main focus is on drawing and installation but she also works with film and performance. She has exhibited widely in Sweden and around the world, for example Missoula Art Museum, USA (2011), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2009) and Seoul Photo Fair (2009).
Helena Wikström (b.1964) is a visual artist, living and working in Umeå, Sweden. She started off as a painter but today she just as often works with installations and photographs. During the last years Helena has made several public commissions at schools and in hospitals. Amongst her exhibitions one can mention “Nomad by Heart” Bildmuseet, Umeå, “Into the Garden of my Mind” GANA art , Seoul, South Korea, “Pleasures from Sweden” Arsenal Municipal gallery, Posnan, Poland and Umedalen Sculpture park 2002, Umeå, Sweden. Helena also works as a director for the White Cube gallery at NorrlandsOperan in Umeå.
In their collaborative projects Gerd Aurell and Helena Wikström have been working with art that focuses on urban planning and democracy, for example “Another City is Possible” for the 2009 MADE-festival in Umeå. Together with seven other Umeå-based artists they run the artist-run space Verkligheten (“Reality”) since 2001. (G.A., H.W.)