IN BETWEEN

2017

Waiting isn’t visible, but you can feel it. It cannot be touched but it can touch you. You can feel it in your body, from your head all the way down to your toes. Waiting is impossible to lock down; it is fluent and floating between us. Waiting exists between you and me, creating a room.

That room is an in-between filled with time that you can move in and out of.

In this in between she is waiting, and has been waiting. Waiting for change, in the shadow of someone else.

To those who have been waiting before me, without your waiting, this wouldn´t be possible.

Door - 107 hours of waiting

The in-between is created between rooms. It is a mental state, a place to reflect, think and distance ourselves from what is. Here I can be with my own thoughts and reflections, without someone else’s values, here I only manage my own.

I like the idea of waiting rooms and how they move around us all the time, floating, levitating, prepared to embrace those who need them. It creates the in-between, we can step in and out, between rooms.

With the door I want to create a room, a room that symbolizes this mental waiting room, the in-between. I have carved out different types of traditionally female crafts on the inside of the door and also marked the time she has been in this mental state of waiting. This is a state of mind you are going in and out of, but some waiting takes longer. I want the different traditional female handicrafts to symbolize the time we have waited for change and equality, which in many ways we are still waiting for.

Armchair - 437 hours of waiting

For me, traditional female craft is strongly intertwined with the act of waiting. For centuries, women have used craft as a way of occupying themselves whilst waiting. Crafts, which are traditionally associated with women, are also connected to time and repetition.

The armchair is upholstered in layers of embroidery. All the embroidery is turned inside out, sewn together by hand, and each stitch is a mark of time and an act of a woman's hand. The embroideries are inherited or bought second hand for almost nothing. It was important to use these cheaply sourced and undervalued embroideries because it highlights the notion that a woman's hand is worth less than a man's.

The front of the embroideries, the facade, is facing the padding and you see the back of the embroidery instead. You are now seeing the maker's true side and revealing the personality behind the embroidery, with all its knots and severing threads. Here are voices from several women, talking about the waiting they endured, in the chair they sat in while they waited.

Armchair - 437 hours of waiting, detail

Carpet - 173 hours of waiting

The tradition of the woman’s role in the home persists. The legacy of waiting continues. Expectations of how to be, to keep up a flawless facade. Does waiting ever move forward or is it just a repetition, as the pattern of a carpet? Here it is also about our patriarchal society, this social invention that provides benefits to a particular group of people. It generates power. And creates an unfair imbalance when it comes to waiting. Waiting for the same rights, waiting for visibility, and waiting to be able to take space. So far, the carpet is easy to step on.

Lids – 284 hours of waiting

Preserve, store, reserve, stock, take care of. Every year the same thing. Keep in place with paraffin. The jam is opened; the paraffin is thrown away, no longer holding any value. The jar is used; the lid is screwed on and off. Finally into the pantry again, pile up. Existing, but not being seen. To have a function, only when the second part is in place.

You encapsulate time and let it wait. The lids are an archive of events, a certain kind of waiting, in which time is spent, but in the same way held prisoner. The lids have no function without a jar to hold them. They are waiting to be given a function.

Embroidery frame – 62 hours of waiting

Being in the periphery and being almost invisible. To be taken for granted and not being seen, is something that most people can recognize and understand. Here, waiting becomes an invisible body, which is overlooked.