ANNA LING
JELLYFISH
March 25, 2011 – April 22, 2011
Anna Ling, who lives and works in Malmö, will exhibit three cycles of drawings and collages which have been created especially for this space. The works of Anna Ling are designed around a theme for each particular series and are based on the tension between the visual image and the different meanings of what is depicted.
The series entitled Caves arose in the process of doing research for the exhibition and reading about caves in Slovenia. Anna Ling used old woodcuts of caves from different places dating from the 19th century, scanned them, and printed them out in larger scale. Printed images of the caves are carved in the shape of bat silhouettes and pasted on a white paper background. In this way caves become bats, and vice versa; bats turn into images of caves, similar to the psychological motifs from Rorschach tests. The title Caves contributes to the potentialization of meanings, to what is denoted and what denotes.
Steel wires and Jellyfish is composed of a series of eleven drawings involving an interplay between two different things: steel wires and jellyfish. It could almost be said that it is a sort of visual misunderstanding. Jellyfish and steel wires have nothing in common yet nevertheless they are shown as though they are in the same family. The strong steel wire is painted as a transparent abstract image, while the bright transparent colour of the jellyfish takes on the tone of the steel wires. Anna Ling says “I wanted to make a poetic project that is influenced by the anthroposophic imagery.”
The third series, a diptych of drawings entitled My Slovenian Garden, is a work originating in a personal story after Anna Ling’s first visit to Slovenia, visiting the relatives of her life partner. The two drawings were made in Sweden by looking at pictures from the trip and maps from the region visited. It is an attempt to visualize how places are connected with the history of specific people, in which the drawings remain as mysterious in nature as the places and people which until lately had been unknown to her. My Slovenian Garden, like the other works of Anna Ling, are imaginations of the invisible through concretely and clearly given figures from the real world.
Project supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and IASPIS –The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists.