SHADOW OF HANDS, SKIN OF SOULS

Trollhättan 2025

Together with Maria Q Brising and in a collaboration with Trollhättan Art hall and as a part of GIBCA Extended, we invited people to a workshop in a cathedral-like room in Trollhättan, Pumphuset. 

We wished to seek the unnameable within us through tactile materials. Art and spiritual seeking met in an investigation of the mystery of being human.

20 people participated in a ritualistic exploration that concluded with shared reflection.

Where does the soul live? In the movement of the hand, in the skin's meeting with the world?

5 singers from different church choirs sang hymns in harmony, sometimes improvised, sometimes soft and quiet and sometimes the room was completely silent.

On the floor lay graphite, white slurry, black fabric, plaster - materials to stay with "unreasonably long," to contemplate, to spend time with.

Maria asked participants to "stay longer than what feels comfortable" so that a relationship could emerge. Now and then I rang a small bell, inspired by the Catholic church where a gong sounds when the substance of the communion bread transforms into the body of Christ.

Was it now? Was it now that the object in my hand became ensouled?

One of the participants burst into tears because she so rarely allows herself to do something practical that has no clear purpose. Another stated that the experience was "so much better than antidepressants." This is what we wanted to explore, inviting people to ceremonies and actions that don't need to "be for something." To spread your body in flour, to look at a piece of firewood for a long time, to be silent together in a stone vault.

Deep thanks to everyone, all the participants, all members of the choir.

Photos by Åsa Johansson and Niklas Karlsson