The pocket archive, 2024
Orsa konsthall, 2024The project centres on the objects children collect and carry home – stones, sticks, shells, and other seemingly insignificant things. By documenting and reworking these objects, the project explores the intimate relationship between children and their belongings. Why is it this particular stone that ends up in a pocket? What do children see in these objects that adults so often pass by without noticing?
At Orsa konsthall, selections from this growing archive are presented alongside a series of watercolour paintings based on the objects in the collection. In the paintings, the objects are activated through the children's imagination. A stick is no longer simply a stick, and a shell is more than just a shell; through play, ordinary objects are transformed and given new meanings and functions.
The titles Preoperational Bone, Preoperational Stick, and Preoperational Shell refer to Jean Piaget’s concept of the preoperational stage of childhood, in which symbolic thinking allows objects to move freely between reality and imagination. Before the world is organised into fixed categories, a found object can become almost anything. The works explore this fluid way of seeing, where the meaning of objects is shaped not primarily by their original function, but by the child’s capacity for imagination.
At Orsa konsthall, selections from this growing archive are presented alongside a series of watercolour paintings based on the objects in the collection. In the paintings, the objects are activated through the children's imagination. A stick is no longer simply a stick, and a shell is more than just a shell; through play, ordinary objects are transformed and given new meanings and functions.
The titles Preoperational Bone, Preoperational Stick, and Preoperational Shell refer to Jean Piaget’s concept of the preoperational stage of childhood, in which symbolic thinking allows objects to move freely between reality and imagination. Before the world is organised into fixed categories, a found object can become almost anything. The works explore this fluid way of seeing, where the meaning of objects is shaped not primarily by their original function, but by the child’s capacity for imagination.
