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Trembling Matter
The works takes shape through material making, painting and sculpture as both portals and portable installations. Textile is used as a framework, while post humanism and phenomenology supports the investigation. Both the images and materials used are made from found materials and notions gathered from in-between spaces. There is a quiet chaos present, as the whirlwind of matter unfold: 3D-printing next to felting, oil paint on an old coconut fiber rug, deadstock clothes from my grandparents general store becoming a canvas, leaves balancing on spikes of turned wood or sewn together. These subjects exert an unsettling pull revealing two intertwined meanings of nature. One is the natural environment that humans idealise yet exploit. The other is nature as the inherent character of a thing, a site, a body or even a force. Although language separates these meanings, they exist in constant exchange, shaping our most inhabited behaviours. It is within this tension Gösta operates; assembling parts into installations that form temporary environments. Utopias and dystopias appear, both urban and wild, revealing how our care, or lack of care, for nature inevitably returns to us.
A soundscape composed in collaboration with Sean Alexander accompany the installation. It builds on field recordings from gathering of materials and field studies. The soundscape exist as a limited edition of 10 vinyl records which comes with a printed version of Gösta’s master thesis Trembling Matter: Cloth as a bodily vessel for speculative landscapes.
The full paper will soon be available on DiVA.
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to cultivate an artistic practice allowing for a more attentive relationship to the physical matter of one’s immediate surroundings. Situated at the intersection of urban environments and nature, the project investigates how the human and the more-than-human are continuously interwoven. Through extensive fieldwork in Paris’s 18ème Arrondissement in France and Hållsviken bay in Sweden, image-making and material processes are explored as methods for sensing and relating to space. By treating found materials as active participants rather than passive supports, the making of pigments, textures, and structures becomes a form of speculative landscaping. Textile theory acts as a conceptual framework, while post-humanism and phenomenology support the argumentation to better understand embodied and relational experiences. The study of three historical textiles, conducted
at the Louvre’s collections and Musée de Cluny, contextualises the theories and feelings presented. These works connect material practices of the past and present, situating the project within current dilemmas of climate change, consumption and technology. Poetic references of literature becomes tools to further reflect on human agency, and our malfunctioning relationship to the environment in contemporary Western culture. Finally, the project proposes textile-based installations, constructed as portable and reconfigurable structures, as a way to engage singular moments in spontaneous and immersive spaces.
Key words
Materialism, Post-humanism, Anthropocene, Environment, Tapestry, Textile, Painting, Printing, Nature, Urbanism
CRAFT! Degree Exhibition at Konstfack, Stockholm - 10th to 19th of April 2026.